A judge ruled on Tuesday that the Trump administration could inch forward on a plan to paint the gray granite exterior of the Eisenhower Executive Building white.
In an order from the bench in Federal District Court in Washington, Judge Dabney L. Friedrich said that initial tests to evaluate how the paint would affect the building’s walls and other preparations would not directly harm preservationist groups who sued to stop the effort.
But she warned that she would intervene if the administration moved ahead with a full paint job before other legal questions were settled.
Judge Friedrich said that the government’s descriptions of its immediate plans on Tuesday were far more preliminary than the full painting of the building President Trump had proposed as part of his larger effort to alter many of Washington’s most recognizable landmarks to suit his taste.
The Dwight D. Eisenhower Executive Building, built in the French Second Empire style, was completed in 1888 and planned to absorb the growing staff of the Departments of State, War and the Navy. Its design stood out from the classical revival style of surrounding buildings, with unpainted exterior granite walls made from stone quarried in Virginia and Maine.
Mr. Trump has said he wishes to paint the whole building. In an interview on Fox News in November, Mr. Trump said he was “getting bids right now from painters” to work on the project, calling the building “ugly” and its gray a color “for funerals.”
In a sworn statement ahead of the hearing, Heather Martin, a White House official, said the plan included “minimally invasive” paint tests and an exploration of other measures “that would improve, restore and better preserve” the building’s facade.
Historical preservation groups sued in November to block the painting, asking Judge Friedrich to freeze any effort to alter the building before the project underwent several environmental and architectural reviews. After the Trump administration announced its intent to move ahead with an initial study in July, the groups filed an emergency motion to stop it.
While Judge Friedrich, a Trump appointee, declined to stop the testing, she ordered that the parties jointly update her on the project every 14 days. She said the larger questions remain about whether the General Services Administration, the agency that has been responsible for the building, could delegate its maintenance to the White House.
“We would have preferred that no invasive testing occurs until the administration followed the legally required process, but today’s decision is about limited testing,” said Greg Werkheiser, a lawyer from Cultural Heritage Partners, one of the groups suing.
“The much larger questions about whether the president can paint the Eisenhower Building and whether the White House can exempt this project from federal law remain open in this active case,” he said.
