The US president Donald Trump’s plan to “beautify” the Eisenhower Executive Office Building (EEOB) by painting its granite exterior white—which White House staff estimate will cost around $7.5m—hit a snag yesterday (7 May) when the project came before the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC). In a 1.5-hour session that included impassioned comments from preservationists and the public speaking out against the plan, as well as some probing questions from commission members, the panel approved a motion requesting further details about how paint will impact the historic building, how much continued maintenance would cost, and whether less intrusive and more affordable options to “brighten the building”, like exterior lighting, could be used instead.
Presenting the NCPC’s staff report on the proposal, the urban planner Michael Weil related the history of the EEOB, which underwent a major cleaning and modernisation effort between 2004 and 2012. While stating that agency staff supports the White House proposal to clean, repaint, reseal and restore the building's façades, Weil said more information is needed to fully evaluate the painting proposal.
“First, we need to understand the project's potential visual and physical impacts both to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building and to the Lafayette Square National Historic Landmark District,” Weil said. He also acknowledged the extensive public interest in the project, including “over 2,000 written comments submitted through our agency website”—the vast majority of them negative.
Ryan Erb, the construction operations manager for the White House Office of Administration (WHOA), then answered questions from commission members, starting with Evan Cash, who also serves on the Council of the District of Columbia. Cash was concerned about not just the cost of painting the entire city-block-sized building white, but the ongoing work to keep it clean and stain-free. “We're adding essentially a very new, big maintenance piece” to the building’s upkeep, Cash said.
Erb said the WHOA was still gathering information, but that a preliminary estimate for the paint job was $7.5m, and the office hoped it would last for around 25 years. That cost does not include any of the preliminary cleaning and preparation work needed, however, nor does it take into account any later repainting, Erb said. He added that more testing is required to see how the silicate paint actually performs on similar granite sourced from the same quarry in Vinalhaven, Maine, used to build the EEOB.
When it came time for public comments, several speakers presented heartfelt appeals to the NCPC to reject the painting proposal. These were led by Greg and Marion Werkheiser, the founders of Cultural Heritage Partners, who are suing the Trump administration in federal court to block the project. Perhaps the most engaging testimony was provided by Danilo Feliciano, who opened his comments with a Bible verse: “Thou shalt sprinkle me with hyssop, and I shall be cleansed. Thou shalt wash me, and I shall be made whiter than snow.” Feliciano chose the Psalm for its association with the ancient Hebrew King David, since Eisenhower’s first name at birth was David, not Dwight, as he was later called. “It's literally a house of David,” Feliciano noted.
Pointing to the outpouring of public comments against the project, Feliciano added his own thoughts that “it just doesn't seem like common sense to paint a building that's only been cleaned twice in 150 years because it looks nice in a computer-generated picture. Sure, it might look nice for when the current president leaves office, but give it another ten years or so, and it probably won't be.”
Feliciano ended with an effective comparison to the 1992 movie Death Becomes Her—in which two women, granted immortality, must spackle and spray-paint their undead but ravaged skin into eternity. “They're still alive, but broken, a mockery of the beauty they once had,” Feliciano said. “It would be a shame to paint over such a historic structure with magic paint. It's a temporary fix for a lasting legacy. Could you imagine the Statue of Liberty painted over?”
Because most of the commission’s members are tied to the Trump administration, many voiced their assurance that the project team would do its best to protect the EEOB. But several noted the need for more details as the proposal goes through future stages of review. And when the time came to vote, the commission nearly unanimously approved the NCPC staff report seeking further information, with only the mayoral appointee Arrington Dixon not responding during the roll call. Just moments before, he had briefly appeared on screen in a dentist chair, a bib tied around his chest. “Commissioner Dixon may be unable to speak right now,” NCPC chairman William Scharf noted dryly.
