Late last week, the Trump administration published plans proposing to make exterior improvements to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, a building adjacent to the White House.
In a 15-page proposal, the administration calls for painting the French Second Empire–style building’s facade white, with renderings of the repainted building from various angles. CNN reported on Saturday, however, that Trump has privately called for using a “magic paint with silicate” on the building, which has a slate-gray granite front.
In an expert analysis leaked to CNN, Trump claimed that the magic paint would “strengthen the stone, keep water out, prevent staining, be easy to apply, and rarely require painting.” The expert analysis was conducted with 25 unnamed experts who have “overseen major restoration projects involving mineral silicate paints on some of the United States’ most prominent stone buildings, including the White House and the U.S. Capitol.”
However, the experts concluded that the proposed mineral silicate paint is “not suited for use on granite,” as such paints are designed to bond with stone that contains calcium carbonate, which granite does not. They also said that the paint would not improve granite’s “structural durability” or protect from deterioration; later removal of the paint “could cause additional permanent damage.” Lastly, they concluded that using such a paint would be “incredibly costly and very wasteful.”
Trump first raised the issue of painting the Eisenhower building on Fox News last November, at which point the DC Preservation League and Cultural Heritage Partners filed a lawsuit to stop the administration from making changes without a standard review process. The Preservation League is also a plaintiff in a lawsuit of preservation groups against the Trump administration over its plans to renovate the newly rechristened Trump Kennedy Center.
The plan for the Eisenhower building will be presented for approval by the Commission of Fine Arts on April 16. Last October, Trump fired all six members of the commission prior to its review of Trump’s other construction projects—the planned triumphal arch and the new White House ballroom. They were replaced with Trump appointees in January; in February, they approved Trump’s ballroom plans. A federal judge, however, ordered construction on the ballroom to halt while a lawsuit against that project progresses through the courts.
