The J Edgar Hoover FBI building has long been regarded as the biggest architectural eyesore in Washington, but the capital may be stuck with it after an unexpected obstacle to replacement plans.
When the building was completed in 1975 The Washington Post said that the brutalist concrete edifice on Pennsylvania Avenue was “a symptom of something wrong in government and just as wrong in architecture”, a nod to the anti-FBI sentiment among the more left-leaning among America’s political classes.
The trouble for the agency today is that Republicans increasingly agree with the architectural critics.
After a decade-long competition between rival sites in neighbouring Maryland and Virginia for a new out-of-town HQ which would result in the the deteriorating city carbuncle being bulldozed, senior Republicans in
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