As recently as last fall, the Trump administration was collecting bids to demolish the Cohen building and the art inside it, according to Mydelle Wright, a well-regarded former senior official who worked on preservation at the GSA. (The GSA responded with what Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, during the Watergate scandal, famously called a “non-denial denial.”) Since then, reason has emerged for cautious optimism that the Cohen can be saved, most recently new legislation introduced Monday by Democratic Representatives Dina Titus of Nevada and Lloyd Doggett of Texas.
The Protecting Resources and Ensuring Stewardship of Enduring Records of Visual Expression (PRESERVE) bill doesn’t do that, alas. But it would require the GSA, “not later than 30 days” after it designates a federal property for disposal, to determine whether the property contains protected art; to notify the appropriate congressional committees within 30 days after that; and “not later than 90 days” before a scheduled demolition or sale, to create a preservation committee of experts, including at least one member of the GSA’s own Fine Arts Program (drastically reduced by DOGE but, thankfully, not eliminated). The preservation committee must then submit a plan, to be posted online, to preserve the artwork “to the maximum extent possible, including through a preservation covenant in an outlease agreement and sale terms, or moving covered artwork to another facility or museum.” No sale or demolition may take place until the GSA administrator “certifies to the appropriate congressional committees” that the GSA is implementing a preservation plan and that “the covered artwork … will remain publicly accessible under any future owners or tenants of the property.”
Legal protections for New Deal art in federal buildings exist already, in case law and in regulations. But President Donald Trump has little regard for the former and he’s waging war on the latter. The Cohen building has since 2007 been listed in the National Register of Historic Places, which requires extensive preservation-minded review prior to disposal. This is called the “Section 106 process” (named for that section of the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act). The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, or AHCP, administers Section 106, and soon after entering office Trump removed three members after two others resigned, depriving ACHP of a quorum for about a year. When it re-opened for business this past February, ACHP immediately launched a comprehensive review of Section 106 with the avowed purpose of “streamlining” its preservation requirements. So, putting preservation requirements in statutory language would seem an excellent idea.
My bill would create a process whereby the General Services Administration would have to certify that it is following a preservation plan established by experts before moving forward with a building disposal. This will ensure that publicly commissioned art is taken care of during the disposal process under this administration, and all future administrations for that matter. It also requires GSA to certify that the artwork will continue to be publicly available after the disposal in question.
I do oppose the sale, so I guess we differ in that regard. I take some comfort that certain infrastructure realities are on my side. As I reported last month, Rich Butterworth, senior analyst and adviser with the GSA’s Office of Real Property Utilization and Disposal, and a career civil servant, pointed out on June 25 that because the Cohen shares heating and electrical equipment with a sister building across C St. (the Mary E. Switzer Memorial Federal Building)—a property that GSA does not intend to sell—it follows that unloading the Cohen would cost the federal government a lot of money to reroute a bunch of underground cables and ducts and whatnot. “While a lot of people would like to see this building disposed of,” said Butterworth, ”and given its underutilization rate, we understand why, our thought is, unless we can solve that problem, that might be a building that’s better reinvested in and get back to a utilization rate that would make sense and justify the level of investment.” Amen.
But that’s a battle for another day.
Cohen Building Archive:
June 15, 2026: “Is Trump Selling Himself Back His D.C. Hotel?”
December 10, 2025: “Can the ‘Sistine Chapel of the New Deal’ Be Saved From Trump?”
September 30, 2025: “The New Deal Masterpieces Threatened By Trump’s Downsizing”
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