Trump administration proposes sale of federal buildings all over Pa. — with three in Philly

The U.S. government signaled interest in selling off 443 federally owned buildings across the country on Tuesday, including several historic properties and administrative facilities in Philadelphia.

An inventory published Tuesday on the General Services Administration (GSA) website labeled a dozen buildings in Pennsylvania as “non-core” assets designated for disposal. Combined, those federal properties total over 2.3 million square feet of real estate, spanning from Erie to Wilkes-Barre to Philadelphia.

But by Wednesday morning, the list had been removed from the GSA website without explanation and replaced with a “coming soon” message.

The publication is part of a larger series of deep cuts to federal government spending and employment made by President Donald Trump’s administration, despite austerity not being a core tenet of his 2024 campaign. News also broke Tuesday that the administration plans to end a lease for the recently renovated U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s regional office in Center City.

Nationally, the buildings targeted Tuesday are overwhelmingly concentrated in Washington, D.C.; Maryland; and Virginia. The headquarters of many federal agencies are featured, including those of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Labor, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“It seems like what is intended here is to unload federal property and turn government into a tenant rather than a landlord,” said Joseph McCartin, a Georgetown University professor who focuses on federal employment.

It remains unclear why the GSA — an independent federal agency that manages government real estate holdings and leases — posted the list online Tuesday.

There had been planned cutbacks of federal office space under President Joe Biden, who granted government workers more remote work leeway. (Trump has demanded an end to remote work, while reducing federal office space.) But the list of for-sale buildings last December did not even crack double digits.

The new administration is more sanguinary. Tuesday’s move comes amid uncertainty over the future of the federal workforce in cities like Philadelphia, as Elon Musk and his cost-cutting “DOGE” task force slash thousands of jobs, contracts, and grants across the nation.

“It’s very obvious what they are trying to aggressively dispose of,” said Brian Goldstein, professor of architectural history at Swarthmore College and a former GSA employee. “You don’t see courthouses on this list. You don’t see border stations. You see particular kinds of federal buildings.”

In Philadelphia, the potential for-sale list includes the New Deal-era U.S. Custom House, a recently restored Art Deco office building and Old City landmark.

In contrast to the current zeitgeist of job reduction in Washington, the federal government built the Custom House in 1932 as a Depression-era workforce development project, helping combat unemployment. It is a frequent target of protests and news conferences. Today, the building is home to various federal agencies as well as a satellite office for Pennsylvania’s U.S. Sen. John Fetterman.

The Mid-Atlantic Social Security Center, a 534,000-square-foot brick office building at Third and Spring Garden Streets, was also on the list, as well as a Veterans Affairs Department building in Philadelphia most likely on Wissahickon Avenue — the GSA list did not provide exact addresses.

A fourth Philadelphia location was mysteriously described as “Federal Building 05″ and measured at an unlikely zero square feet.

Neither GSA or VA spokespeople immediately provided answers to The Inquirer’s questions.

Although the Washington, D.C., metropolitan region made up 40% of the list, according to a Bloomberg analysis, many of the nation’s largest cities are also well-represented. It includes several buildings bearing the names of public figures Trump has clashed with like the Nancy Pelosi building in San Francisco and the Dick Cheney FBI building in Casper, Wyo.

“It does seem a little punitive the way that it’s focused on certain cities. ... It’s surprising Philadelphia didn’t get more cuts,” Goldstein said.

Philadelphia property assessments put the value of the three buildings at a combined $211 million, and they cover over 1.5 million square feet. But that represents a fraction of the federal government’s holdings in the city.

The federal portfolio in Philadelphia includes at least 75 parcels that range from tiny post office buildings to monumental edifices like the Philadelphia branch of the U.S. Mint on Independence Mall or the towering James A. Byrne federal justice building at 601 Market.

Eight other buildings across Pennsylvania are on the GSA list, most of them under 11,000 square feet. The exceptions are the largest building, Pittsburgh’s 667,239-square-foot William S. Moorhead Federal Building, and a 233,995-square-foot former red brick beer brewery that houses Wilkes-Barre’s federal offices.

“I don’t know if there’s a politics to this, but in [many Pennsylvania cities], the federal building and the courthouse [are] one,” Goldstein said. “That somewhat protects those small cities because they don’t have the square footage that has forced the differentiation of functions, so you don’t have the same ability to get rid of the federal building.”

Pennsylvania lacks another apparently targeted category: Brutalist architecture.

Many of the targeted buildings in Washington, D.C., are Brutalist in design, a style Trump condemned by executive order on the first day of his new term and ordered the GSA to issue recommendations for aligning federal buildings with his principles.

But many of the buildings in the Washington D.C. area were removed from the list even before the GSA took down the whole thing without explanation.

Selling federal property is a “considerable task” that involves a lengthy four-phase disposition process, the GSA notes on its website. Many of the properties are not in prime locations, and it was not clear how many would have serious suitors. Experts like Goldstein argued that the mammoth task of selling hundreds of federal buildings could be impeded by the culling of bureaucracy currently underway.

Staff writers Ryan Briggs and Dylan Purcell contributed to this article.