President Donald Trump has at least one thing in common with most Washingtonians: He really, really dislikes the J. Edgar Hoover Building.
So says Axios’ Jonathan Swan, who reported Sunday not only on Trump’s personal distaste for the Brutalist, crumbling home of the FBI at 901 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, but also on Trump’s flat out refusal to allow the agency to leave D.C. for the suburbs, as was previously planned.
Swan cites a source quoting the president saying, “Honestly, I think it’s one of the ugliest buildings in the city.” The building needs a “total revamp,” Trump reportedly said, but the FBI should stay there because “it’s a great address” on “prime real estate.”
The massive Hoover building, the FBI’s headquarters since 1974, is just a couple blocks from the Trump International Hotel.
As the WBJ has chronicled, the state of the FBI’s home is in standoff mode between the General Services Administration, which switched gears in 2017 from a suburban headquarters to a new building on the existing Hoover footprint, and Congress, which would have to fund that billion dollar-plus project.