Philip Guston, Reconstruction and the Well-Being of the Family, 1942, The Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building, Washington. D.C., photograph U.S. General Services Administration. Four federal buildings in Washington, D.C., some prized for New Deal era murals, others for landmark modernist architecture, are examples from a growing preservation fight heading into 2026. Preservationists say the coming year may decide whether irreplaceable art stays in place, is relocated at great risk, or is lost entirely through demolition and redevelopment.
Seymour Fogel, Wealth of the Nation, 1942, buon fresco with secco additions, commissioned through the Section of Fine Arts, 1934-1943
Fine Arts Collection, U.S. General Services Administration, Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building, Washington, DC., Carol M. Highsmith photography.
In a case brought by historic preservation groups (Cultural Heritage Partners, PLLC v. Trump, No. 1:25-cv-03969 (D.D.C. filed Nov. 14, 2025), a sworn declaration by Mydelle Wright, a retired General Services Administration (GSA) official, has drawn the federal court’s particular attention. Ms. Wright alleged that the White House is exploring demolition or irreparable, damaging alterations to four historic federal properties: soliciting bids to demolish the Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building, the Robert C. Weaver Federal Building (HUD headquarters), the GSA Regional Office Building (also listed as the “Federal Office Building, 7th & D”), and the Liberty Loan Building.
The heritage groups’ attorney told Judge Dabney Friedrich of the US District Court for the District of Columbia that under pressure from President Trump, the GSA was incapable of following the required processes set forth in environmental and historic preservation laws.
Among other proposals announced by the administration following the demolition of the East Wing and plans for a giant ballroom dwarfing the remaining White House, the President has said he would paint the entire granite exterior of the late 19th century Eisenhower Executive Office Building “white,” and getting bids from painters.
In March, at the height of DOGE, the GSA originally posted a listing of 440 federal buildings to be offered for sale – half of all federal buildings – but this listing was wiped off its website within hours and replaced with a notice that a new list was “coming soon.” It wasn’t. However, the administration still claims to be massively disposing of unneeded federal real estate, including agency headquarters whose workers have been ordered to come back to office work or be fired.
In her declaration, Ms. Wright wrote:
“For the first time of which I am aware, a President is personally involved in facilitating end-runs around the agency’s obligations to the buildings that are our national heritage, and who in the agency is going to tell him ‘No?’”
This preservation case overlaps with another, quieter story already unfolding inside federal corridors: GSA’s accelerated push to offload major properties, even as the agency’s capacity to steward its sprawling public art holdings has been weakened by staffing cuts, the shuttering of at least five regional offices, and uncertainty about its collections’ management. In March 2025, over half of the GSA’s conservation and preservation workers were placed on leave pending termination.
Case 1: The Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building and the “Sistine Chapel of New Deal Art”
If you know the Cohen building at all, it’s likely because of what’s on its walls.
Ben Shahn, The Meaning of Social Security, 1942, painting, fresco secco (egg tempera on dry plaster), commissioned through the Section of Fine Arts, 1934-1943, Fine Arts Collection, U.S. General Services Administration, Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building, Washington, DC., Carol M. Highsmith photography.
The building is on the National Register of Historic Places. It was built in 1939-40 as the intended headquarters for the Social Security Board, the Cohen building houses an unusually concentrated cluster of federally commissioned New Deal artworks – murals designed to explain the promise of Social Security to the public. The building is listed on GSA’s “assets identified for accelerated disposition” list, with a rentable area of about 1,045,197 square feet, and was posted there in mid-May 2025.
Ben Shahn’s multi-panel mural suite, The Meaning of Social Security, is the building’s artistic center. The imagery is explicitly didactic: one side shows vulnerability and hardship before the Social Security Act; the other side shows what becomes possible when a safety net exists – work, stability, care for elders, and protection for families.
Shahn wrote to Edward Bruce, director of the Section:
“To me, it is the most important job that I could want. The building itself is a symbol of perhaps the most advanced piece of legislation enacted by the New Deal, and I am proud to be given the job of interpreting it, or putting a face on it.”
Even in the preparatory stage, Shahn’s murals carried a built-in warning about fragility: he inspected the walls, found cracks and pores, and asked the federal arts program to replaster them which would enable him to create a more durable wet plaster mural. The request was denied.
Henry Kreis, Benefits of Social Security, 1941, sculpture in granite, New Deal Art Program, Fine Arts Collection, U.S. General Services Administration, Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building, Washington, DC., Carol M. Highsmith photography.
Preservationists say this matters now because any move to remove the murals would place them at risk. In a November 2025 public-radio interview, art historian Mary Okin of the organization Living New Deal emphasized that detaching wall-painted works is possible but “extraordinarily expensive,” and that Shahn’s technique, fresco-secco (paint applied to dry plaster rather than wet) – can be especially fragile when disturbed. A detailed description of the concerns of this heritage organization may be found in its online petition to preserve the Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building.
In the lobby, Seymour Fogel’s murals translate policy into scenes of prosperity and reassurance. GSA’s own collection notes describe Security of the People as an American family framed by signs of well-being – education, leisure, health, stability. Fogel’s Wealth of the Nation turns the New Deal’s recovery promise into a triptych-like vision of scientific research, construction, and heavy industry – an architect with blueprints, a worker at a machine, and a scientist examining microbes in a laboratory.
One of the Cohen building’s most telling details is also one of the easiest to miss: Philip Guston’s Reconstruction and the Wellbeing of the Family was designed for the building’s auditorium as a large work spanning a three-part sliding screen, so the mural is literally integrated with a mechanism built into the room. That physical integration is part of why preservationists argue demolition (or even an aggressive redevelopment) is not just a real estate decision. These works weren’t hung in the building; they were made for it, engineered into it.
2026 could be decisive
The Cohen building sits at the intersection of two forces: (1) a fast-tracked federal property disposal pipeline and (2) an alleged White House interest in demolition as the quickest path to land ready for development. A recent New Republic investigation by Timothy Noah argued that privatization, in practical terms, can become “synonymous with demolition” for a building of this scale and condition, especially if a buyer wants the site rather than the structure. Meanwhile, the retired GSA official’s declaration to the Court put the word “demolition” directly into the conversation as a near-term possibility.
Case 2: 301 7th Street SW – The GSA Regional Office Building (a.k.a. “Federal Office Building – 7th & D”) and Harold Weston’s 22-Panel Mural Cycle
Harold Weston, Architecture Under Government – Old and New, 1936-1938, oil on canvas, Treasury Relief Art Project, 1935 – 1938, GSA Fine Arts Collection, photo GSA\Kristen Fusselle, public domain.
The building at 301 7th Street SW shows up under two names depending on which document you’re reading. In the former GSA official’s declaration, it’s the “GSA Regional Office Building,” in fact, the headquarters of the GSA itself. On the GSA’s accelerated disposition list, where it was listed on April 10, it appears as “FEDERAL OFFICE BUILDING – 7TH & D,” with 845,169 rentable square feet.
Inside, the key cultural asset is a sweeping, 22-panel mural series by painter Harold Weston, funded through Depression-era federal arts support and installed in the late 1930s.
GSA’s fine-arts catalog records that the mural was unveiled July 1, 1938, and that it is organized as a three-part celebration of the Treasury Department’s Procurement Division – depicting how the federal government planned, built, and supplied large-scale public works during the Great Depression.
Harold Weston, Supply Branch of Procurement, 1936-1938, oil on canvas, Treasury Relief Art Project, 1935 – 1938, GSA Fine Arts Collection, photo GSA\Kristen Fusselle, public domain.
The installation layout is unusually specific: visitors encounter six large panels of “Modern Construction” above elevator banks, while another section explores “Architecture Under Government – Old and New,” framing federal building as both economic engine and civic mission. A GSA Office of Inspector General memo also summarizes the work as a 22-mural cycle completed between 1936 and 1938. It notes the building’s poor condition but also the District of Columbia’s request for its historic landmark designation and a nomination for listing in the National Register.
As with the Cohen building, the problem isn’t simply where to “move” the art if the building changes hands. These murals are part of the building’s identity, scale, and circulation: they are encountered while waiting for elevators, turning corners in lobbies, moving through federal space that was deliberately designed to be instructive.
Case 3: The Robert C. Weaver Federal Building – Modernist Landmark, Internal Art, and a Political Target
Robert C. Weaver building under construction. Photo U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), public domain.
The Robert C. Weaver Federal Building (HUD headquarters) is a different kind of heritage case. The story here is less about New Deal murals and more about modern federal architecture – and the artworks and design features embedded within it.
The former GSA official’s declaration names the Weaver building as one of the four potential demolition targets. It is also listed on GSA’s accelerated disposition page (“ROBERT C. WEAVER BUILDING,” 451 7th Street SW), with about 1,121,915 rentable square feet.
What makes it “historic” (even if some people hate it)
GSA poster for Robert C. Weaver building, HUD headquarters, Washington D.C., General services Administration.
GSA’s own historic-building profile calls the Weaver building “one of the most successful modern-era buildings in GSA’s inventory,” highlighting Marcel Breuer’s Brutalist design as a major federal expression of the 1962 “Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture.” The profile also records the building’s technical bravura: precast concrete wall units roughly three feet thick, weighing nearly 13 tons each, perched on paired pilotis (structural supports that lift a building off the ground) that create a sheltered loggia at the ground level.
Crucially for an “artworks in federal buildings” story, GSA notes that the entrance lobby includes a sculptural bust by Oskar Stonorov of Catherine Bauer Wurster, a key public-housing advocate from the 1930s, an internal artwork that ties the building’s mission to the broader social history of affordable housing for workers.
Trump has formally pushed an aesthetic agenda for federal architecture. On his first day of the second term, he issued an order Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture and directing GSA to advance the policy that federal public buildings should “respect regional, traditional, and classical architectural heritage.”
Later in 2025, the White House issued another order – “Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again” – explicitly favoring classical styles for federal public buildings.
Modernist and Brutalist landmarks like the Weaver building are styles that these policies disfavor.
So while the Weaver building doesn’t carry the same mural-density as the Cohen building, it represents a parallel risk: that historically significant federal modernism (and its integrated artworks and civic design features) could be treated as disposable under the Trump administration’s “beautiful” Washington policy.
Case 4: The Liberty Loan Building – A Century-Old “Temporary” Relic at the Tidal Basin
Liberty Loan Building at 14th and D Sts., SW, Washington D.C., photo National Park Service, public domain.
The 1919 Liberty Loan Building is the odd one out: it’s not famous for murals or architectural innovation but for its historical role. It is a singular survival of Washington’s “temporary” World War I architecture, necessary but sometimes disliked by presidents and public. The National Park Service describes the Liberty Loan Building as the last remaining “tempo” (temporary war department building type) in Washington, noting it was built in 1919 and now houses the Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service.
GSA publicly announced plans in 2024 to dispose of the building at 401 14th Street SW as the Treasury tenant prepared to relocate. And as of late 2025, the building appears on GSA’s accelerated disposition list as “LIBERTY LOAN,” with 133,083 rentable square feet.
In other words: unlike the Cohen building, where “sale” sparks fear that demolition becomes possible, the Liberty Loan building is already on a disposal track that predates the current demolition allegations. The only new twist is that it’s now named in the same set of claimed White House demolition plans fast-tracked by the current administration, although its proposed elimination or sale dates to the prior one.
Accelerated Disposition Meets a Weakened Art-Stewardship System
The GSA frames accelerated disposition today as “rightsizing the federal real estate portfolio” to reduce taxpayer burden while meeting agency mission needs. But preservationists argue the speed and opacity of disposal creates a particular danger when buildings contain integrated art – murals and site-specific works that are hard (or financially unworkable) to remove.
Alexander Calder, Flamingo, 1974. Painted steel; dimensions: 53 x 24 x 60 feet. GSA Fine Arts Collection, Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, public domain.
That risk is amplified by turmoil in the very part of government meant to manage these objects. Placing more than half of the staff responsible for caring for the collection on leave raises alarms about how 26,000 federally owned artworks are left “in limbo” amid cuts and building selloffs.
And now there’s the demolition allegation itself: Bloomberg Law reported that the retired GSA official’s supplemental declaration was filed in litigation initially focused on blocking Trump from painting a stone federal building near the White House – placing the question of demolition inside an active legal fight over federal preservation obligations.
That legal fight is only focused on four federal buildings in Washington, D.C. out of more than 800 nationally – and buildings are not all that’s at risk. The General Services Administration also manages the federal government’s holding of about 26,000 artworks, including not only murals but also paintings, sculptures, and other works by well-known artists at federal buildings nationally. Their fate is also uncertain, since the proposed sales and demolitions by the Trump administration has been wiped from the GSA website, and replaced by the sentence, “We will post additional assets regularly.”
Bicentennial Dawn, Louise Nevelson (1976), painted wood, in lobby interior of James A. Byrne U.S. Courthouse, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. GSA Fine Arts Collection, photograph Carol M. Highsmith, public domain.
The GSA Fine Arts Collection includes:
Famous sculptures (and major public works)
- Flamingo, Alexander Calder (1974), steel; John C. Kluczynski Federal Building, Chicago, IL.
- Batcolumn, Claes Oldenburg (1977), painted steel & aluminum; Harold Washington Social Security Center, Chicago, IL.
- Bicentennial Dawn, Louise Nevelson (1976), painted wood; James A. Byrne U.S. Courthouse, Philadelphia, PA.
- Bearing Witness, Martin Puryear (1997), patinated bronze; Ronald Reagan Federal Building & International Trade Center, Washington, DC.
- Facets to the Sun, Louise Bourgeois (1978), painted/polished steel; Norris Cotton Federal Building, Manchester, NH.
- Young Lincoln, James Lee Hansen (1941), limestone on granite base; U.S. Courthouse, Los Angeles, CA.
- Kryptos, Jim Sanborn (1990), environmental artwork; Central Intelligence Agency, Langley, VA.
- Man Controlling Trade, Michael Lantz (1942), sculpture (New Deal-era federal commission).
Famous paintings and murals
- Activities of Justice, Henry Varnum Poor (1936), fresco mural cycle; Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building, Washington, DC.
- Construction of A Dam, William Gropper (1939), mural paintings; Stewart Lee Udall Department of the Interior Building, Washington, DC.
- Steel Industry, Howard Norton Cook (1936), buon fresco mural; Joseph F. Weis Jr. U.S. Courthouse, Pittsburgh, PA.
- Justice of the Plains: The Movement Westward, John Steuart Curry (1936), oil on canvas mural; Robert F. Kennedy DOJ Building, Washington, DC.
- Kansas Farming, Richard Haines (1936), oil on canvas; Wichita U.S. Courthouse, Wichita, KS.
- San Diego Mural, Belle Goldschlager Baranceanu (1934), oil on canvas; Jacob Weinberger U.S. Courthouse, San Diego, CA.
- Color Fuses, Milton Glaser (1975), acrylic on concrete mural; Minton-Capehart Federal Building, Indianapolis, IN.
- Architecture Under Government – Old and New, Harold Weston (1936–1938), oil on canvas mural; GSA National Capital Region Building, Washington, DC.
For many more specific works, see art.gsa.gov.
What to watch for in 2026
Louise Bourgeois, Facets to the Sun, 1978, painted and polished steel sculpture, Commissioned through the Art in Architecture Program, GSA Fine Arts Collection, Norris Cotton Federal Building, Manchester, NH, photograph Carol M. Highsmith, public domain.
A major question is whether “accelerated disposition” turns into demolition-by-default. For mural-heavy buildings like the Cohen, the crucial question isn’t just who buys it,but whether the structure is treated as a cultural asset or merely as “land value,” with the art seen as collateral damage.
Another big “if” is whether preservation law slows the process. Reporting in The New Republic points out the Cohen building is separately protected by D.C. landmark law – meaning federal moves may still collide with local preservation frameworks. Lastly, there is the question of whether GSA can credibly safeguard the art if buildings change hands. Even the best-case scenario in those circumstances – removal and relocation – may be prohibitively expensive and risky for fresco-secco and other wall-bound techniques.
