Photo by Mr. T in DC

If you’ve got any use for a massive Art Deco-style heating plant in a great Georgetown location, the federal government might have what you’re looking for.

The Post reports that the General Services Administration is looking to sell off the 70-year-old West Heating Plant located at the corner of 29th and K Streets NW, part of a broader plan to slim down the government’s real estate holdings and save an estimated $3 billion.

Some history on the plant, courtesy of the GSA:

The West Heating Plant, completed in 1948, was designed by W.M. Dewey Foster (b. 1890), a private architect. The West Heating Plant generates and supplies fuel to the western group of Federal buildings. As coal was the principal source of fuel, the plant was conveniently sited adjacent to the tracks of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad…Upon its opening, the West Heating Plant burned approximately 900 tons of coal per day, and served government buildings north of 15th and C Streets, N.W. At full capacity the plant could generate 1,000,000 pounds of steam per hour.

The plant was eventually converted to use natural gas, but has sat dormant over the last 10 years, to the tune of $3.5 million in maintenance costs. (A slideshow of pictures of the plant can be found here.)

Both the Post and the Georgetown Metropolitan engage in some speculation as to what may come of the hulking structure, with developers seeing it as a potential site for condos and some nearby residents pleading for it to become a park. If the structure is kept intact, there’s plenty of space to be put to use — all told, some 93,000 square feet.

I worked behind this building for six years, and never for the life of me knew what it was. Given the sheer size and design of it — the GSA calls it both “muscular” and “near monolithic” — I always imagined it as a likely setting for the Ministry of Love from George Orwell’s 1984.