It was born with the world premiere of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass. “Young people will come here and they will see this cultural centre,” Rose Kennedy, the mother of slain US president John F Kennedy, said at that opening night gala. “They will carry some of these ideas back to their different communities.”

More than half a century later, the potential death knell came just after 4.30pm on Tuesday with a perfunctory announcement on the public address system: “The centre is now closed to the public. Please exit the centre by way of the Hall of States.” Soon barricades had been erected and security guards were blocking access.

The John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC, once filled with the buzz of audiences and children, had fallen as silent as a mausoleum. Now a high stakes legal battle is under way to prevent Donald Trump from taking a wrecking ball to the building that is both national arts complex and living memorial to the 35th president.

The current White House occupant, incensed that courts have prevented his name being added to the Kennedy Center, told reporters this week: “I think that the Trump administration should certainly have recognition. Because frankly, if we don’t do that, it’s going to close. It’ll end up being ripped down.” On social media, Trump declared the venue “destined to doom” without his intervention.

The once unthinkable threat became more thinkable when an Agence France-Presse photographer took a picture of Trump aboard Air Force One, holding a placard with ominous red text: “Kennedy Center DEMOLIS…” The rest of the word was obscured by the plane’s window frame. Below was a big picture showing a yellow heavy construction vehicle scooping rubble from a torn-down building.

Trump has no legal right to demolish the facility, which was established by Congress. Critics say he is acting out of spite because he cannot get his way. Kerry Kennedy, the former president’s niece , said: “Like a child who can’t play with a toy, he wants to stomp on the toy. But this is not a toy. This is the living memorial to a slain president.

“It would be like adding the Trump name to the Trump-Lincoln Memorial or the Trump-Jefferson Memorial or Trump-Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The courts have spoken, he cannot demolish it, he cannot put his name on it and he should be focused instead on his job.”

The Kennedy Center did not respond to requests for comment.

The 100ft structure opened in 1971 on the banks of the Potomac River. Since then it has presented ballet, children’s theatre, comedy, contemporary dance, hip-hop, jazz, international festivals and educational programmes. The annual Kennedy Center Honors have hosted past presidents and a who’s who of US arts and culture.

Trump seized control of the facility in February 2025, claimed its finances were in dire straits and fired board members who did not align with his “vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture”. Deborah Rutter, the centre’s president, was ousted and replaced by Ric Grenell, a Trump loyalist and former ambassador with no experience in arts management.

An initiative created in 2020 to promote anti-racism and community outreach was shut down and its 10-person staff dismissed. Citing “drag shows specifically targeting our youth”, any programming perceived as “woke” was purged. It was a commercial disaster as audiences, performers and philanthropists deserted the centre in droves.

Lawyer Norm Eisen, who has litigated against the administration’s attempts to impinge on institutional independence, said: “He slapped his name on there and destroyed the lifeblood of the Kennedy Center: audience and artists.”

In January, the Kennedy Center hosted the world premiere of Melania, a documentary about the first lady, with the Trumps in attendance. Three days later, the president announced that he would be closing the facility for two years for $257m repairs and renovations.

The Trump-appointed board backed the move and also voted to rename the venue the “Trump-Kennedy Center”. Trump’s name was duly added to the exterior marble facade, before the US district judge Christopher Cooper intervened and ruled that only Congress has the authority to rename the memorial. The name was removed but the result remains hidden by giant scaffolding and tarpaulins.

Asked about Trump’s motivations, Eisen of Democracy Defenders Action added: “You would need an authority in abnormal psychology to get the answer to that question but he appears to have developed an obsession because he’s not used to hearing the word no.”

On Tuesday this week, Judge Cooper again ruled that the Trump administration could not put a new Trump sign on the Kennedy Center’s facade or rename its plaza for the president “without Congress’s blessing”.

Hours later, the centre’s board voted to close the facility for two years, citing the need for $257m of repairs and renovations. The centre’s executive director, Matt Floca, ordered an immediate seven-day emergency closure, citing “acute risks to public safety resulting from continued structural deterioration”.

But Democratic congresswoman Joyce Beatty and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse allege that the closure is a “pretext” to hide a financial “death spiral” caused by artist boycotts and dwindling ticket sales.

In an interview on Friday, Whitehouse, the top Democrat on the environment and public works committee and an ex-officio member of the Kennedy Center board of trustees, said the events represented three phases of Trump’s assault on the complex.

“One is what I call the mob bust out gone wrong, in which they tried to take over and run the Kennedy Center, give themselves and their friends big contracts, charge expensive goodies to Kennedy Center accounts, do political favours using Kennedy Center facilities for Trump allies, and that was extremely damaging to the business of the centre,” he said.

“Then they moved into the renaming fiasco and that seems to have struck a lethal blow to the centre’s business model – a predictably damaging blow that they failed to consider at all. Now they’ve moved into a third stage in which they are threatening the actual destruction of the Kennedy Center if they don’t get their renaming.”

Whitehouse added: “It has gone from bad to worse but the through line in all of this is that these trustees are under a legal duty to put the welfare of the centre itself first and, if they fail in that duty, they create a legal environment in which courts can and ultimately likely will step in to make sure that the centre is run lawfully.”

The legal battle intensified on Thursday, when Judge Cooper issued an order requiring the Kennedy Center to give at least 30 days’ notice before making any major physical changes to the building, including demolition.

Whitehouse said: “There’s a contrast between the thuggery and bullying world in which you could countenance a threat to tear down the Kennedy Center if your name doesn’t go on it and the actual legal world in which actions have to be approved by a board that has a fiduciary duty to put the welfare of the institution first. Those two are irreconcilable at this point.”

Still, Trump ordered the demolition of the White House East Wing to make way for a ballroom, despite opposition from preservationists and questions over the administration’s authority to proceed without Congress. He is now threatening to cancel the renovation of the Kennedy Center, and warning of its possible demise, if his name is not restored to the building.

Chris Raleigh, an organiser the Hands Off the Arts movement, which is mobilising grassroots resistance, said: “That’s what you do when the hostage takers can’t get what they want. There comes a point where the hostage is inconvenient. Look at it: the people who have fought back have pushed Trump to the brink here.

“In no way at all is he winning. His name is not going up on the building. There is somebody in the White House every day who says, before they walk in that building, ‘Oh god, please don’t let there be another Kennedy Center story today.’”

Raleigh added: “Everyone in Trump’s life should be telling him: ‘You gotta to get out now. This is not going to help you.’”

And even if the current peril passes, it will be difficult to restore the centre to its former glories. On Friday it laid off about a dozen staff, the Washington Post newspaper reported.

Michael Kaiser, who led the centre from 2001 to 2014, warns that even a two-year closure will be damaging. He said: “When you don’t have audiences and you don’t have donors participating for two years, those individuals go elsewhere. When you have no staff, even if there’s a time in the future where we can return to a more sense of being normal, it’s not going to be so simple to reopen a building of this size and complexity.”

Some critics see the attack on the Kennedy Center as part of a broader assault on institutions and freedom of expression. On Friday, Trump announced that the media outlets CNN, MS Now and Politico would be banned from the White House and, with health secretary Robert Kennedy Jr standing behind him in the Oval Office, railed against the Kennedy Center again.

To Kerry Kennedy, who has worked in the human rights arena for 45 years, the president is a “petty tyrant”. Asked to consider the possibility of the Kennedy Center being lost, she reflected: “It would be devastating for my family because we love Uncle Jack but in the end Trump is not going to hurt my family. He is hurting our country and he’s hurting our world and he’s giving permission to tyrants everywhere to shut down arts centres and silence critical voices.”

On Friday evening thousands of protesters gathered outside the Kennedy Center in view of the marble facade that remained concealed by scaffolding and tarpaulins. The speakers included a drag queen.

Against the setting sun, protesters beat drums and waved signs that read: “Keep your tiny hands off our Kennedy Center”; “You’re no Jack Kennedy”; “Our center not DJT’s”; and “Wicked starring DJT”.