The Eisenhower Office Building is ugly. I’m sorry, but it is. The French Empire style is over the top and while I’ll take French Empire over the Stalinist architecture that government buildings embraced in the twentieth century, the Eisenhower doesn’t work. It might be less of an eyesore away from the White House, but the whole point was to provide a space away from the cramped White House quarters. None of this stuff is really architecturally solvable because we have a massive government and a White House intended for a much smaller one, and the Eisenhower Office Building might be at home in Paris, but really doesn’t fit into D.C. and clashes massively with the usual federal style.
President Trump has proposed painting it white. I don’t think that’s going to fix anything, but may perhaps make it less ugly. Painting it white is not going to significantly alter anything but if you expected a freakout, you were right.
Preservationists concerned by President Donald Trump’s public musings this week about painting a 137-year-old building next to the White House completely white sued him Friday to halt the work, arguing that he could not unilaterally alter “one of the most architecturally significant and historic structures in the Nation’s Capital.”
The DC Preservation League and Cultural Heritage Partners, a law firm focused on historic preservation, took Trump seriously and scrambled to slow down any plans, given his recent demolition of the East Wing of the White House. On Friday, the groups asked a federal court to issue an emergency injunction prohibiting Trump and other federal officials from altering the building unless they complete legally required reviews. In a 35-page complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the plaintiffs accused Trump of trying to end-run legally-mandated public input into changes to historic buildings — echoing a complaint lodged by critics of his East Wing teardown.
“The Eisenhower Executive Office Building is one of our nation’s most significant architectural landmarks,” Greg Werkheiser, founding partner of the Cultural Heritage Partners law firm, said in a statement. “Any plan to alter that … like the President revealed this week, especially an irreversible action like painting it all white, must be preceded by a transparent public process that includes expert consultation and a full hard look at potential harms.”
No, no it’s not. Most people outside D.C. aren’t even aware that the Eisenhower exists. When they go on tour, they’re baffled by its existence. Painting it white is a paint job.
But the real question is where was Greg when BLM mobs were tearing down statues? Or when Hamas, afterward, carried out its own vandalism spree in D.C.? Or when leftist ‘environmentalists’ started vandalizing document displays in the National Archives?
If you guessed that Greg and ‘DC Preservation League and Cultural Heritage Partners’ were on Team Destroyers, well…
As our nation continues to contend with racial and social justice issues, the meaning and fate of monuments that fail to represent our American ideals are being debated throughout the country. Our firm has been deeply engaged in several matters involving Confederate “Lost Cause” monuments. We proudly represent clients who seek to have monuments removed from public lands, relocated, or recontextualized in order to be able to tell fully truthful history and create a more inclusive future.
Following social justice protests after the death of George Floyd, and fearful that protests surrounding the monuments would lead to another deadly confrontation by white supremacists, Mayor Levar Stoney sought a strategy for immediate removal of Lost Cause statues on Monument Avenue and through the city. CHP advised Mayor Stoney in the removal of thirteen city-owned Confederate monuments, recommending that he invoke his emergency powers to quickly take down the monuments in the interest of public safety.
Cultural Heritage Partners next represented a group of more than 50 neighbors whose homes have direct lines of sight to the Robert E. Lee Monument, formerly prominently located in what was known as Lee Circle on Monument Avenue in Richmond. Circle Neighbors supported Governor Ralph Northam’s order to immediately remove the monument, an action then challenged in the Supreme Court of Virginia. On behalf the Circle Neighbors, CHP filed an amicus brief arguing that as a matter of US historic preservation policy, the arguments for removal were sound.
The very people fighting to remove monuments are shrieking that painting the Eisenhower Office Building is vandalism.
The vandals are screaming about the importance of ‘preserving’ an office building’s color. They’re not preservationists. They’re leftist radicals and their view on preserving historical sites is contingent entirely on political narratives, not history.
