OK, Now Trump Is Preparing to Bulldoze the Cohen Building Before He Sells the Land
That would be against the law. Time for preservationists to sue?
“The Meaning of Social Security,” Ben Shahn, 1942, in the Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building. Photos by Timothy Noah.
Bloomberg reported earlier this week that the Trump White House is preparing to end-run the General Services Administration, which is the federal government’s landlord, and demolish four federal buildings in Washington illegally so that the land can be sold to private developers. (I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Trump Organization offer a bid.) One of these four buildings is the Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building, “the Sistine Chapel of the New Deal,” with murals by Ben Shahn, Philip Guston, Seymour Fogel, and others. The Shahn mural, “The Meaning of Social Security,” is a series of dry frescoes, and Shahn once said he considered it his best work. Its colors are astonishingly vibrant eight decades after it was painted, I can now report, because last week I finally got inside the building. (Never mind how.)
My photos of “The Meaning of Social Security” don’t quite capture the colors’ brightness, but maybe they will give you some hint:
The Guston mural in the Cohen building’s auditorium is also lovely. As I reported earlier, this mural was hidden by a blue curtain last April while Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, chaired a hearing in that very room to urge the building’s immediate sale. Here’s the Guston:
And here are the extraordinary Fogels:
As long as I’m playing show and tell: Posted below is Monday’s court declaration by Mydelle Wright, a much-respected preservationist at the GSA, now retired, explaining how Trump is plotting to circumvent GSA and bulldoze the Cohen along with Marcel Breuer’s HUD building, the Liberty Loan building, and a GSA annex built during the New Deal. Wright offered this statement in the context of a lawsuit against Trump’s attempts to (in the non-figurative sense) whitewash the Old Executive Office Building.
All this is the subject of my latest New Republic piece, which also relates how Shahn’s masterpiece was almost destroyed during the Cold War after Depression-era leftism fell out of favor. You can read the piece, which contains links to two earlier installments, here. You can sign a petition to save the Cohen here. The story has gotten some pickup from Heather Cox Richardson, NPR, and the Guardian, but no American newspapers. Hey guys, what are you waiting for?
