President Donald Trump has made it clear that the aesthetics of government buildings will be a priority in his second presidency. His memorandum planted the flag: “Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture.” The memo directs the head of the General Services Administration (GSA), the agency that oversees federal buildings, to send “recommendations to advance the policy that Federal public buildings should be visually identifiable as civic buildings and respect regional, traditional, and classical architectural heritage,” and insists that those recommendations “consider appropriate revisions to the Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture.”
Revising the Guiding Principles would be a monumental development. Those principles, issued in 1962 in a White House report on government office space, replaced official classicism (which began with George Washington and Thomas Jefferson) with de facto official modernism, and abdicated authority from the GSA to the (modernist) architectural establishment. “Design must flow from the architectural profession to the Government,” the policy read, “and not vice versa.” By suggesting that these guidelines be changed, Trump is revealing his commitment to democracy in design.
The president’s memorandum has the same title as the executive order on government buildings that he issued at the end of his first term in office. That order revolutionized federal architecture, reorienting it from ugly and banal modernism to classical and traditional design. It required that, in planning the construction of federal buildings, special regard be given to classical and traditional styles across the country, defined broadly to include everything from Art Deco to Pueblo Revival. The order specified that in Washington, D.C.—a city defined by its classical federal buildings and monuments and intended by the Founding Fathers to echo ancient Greece and Rome—classicism was the “preferred and default” style. Trump’s directive also required that the general public—defined to exclude architects and critics—have a say in design decisions. No such requirement had existed at GSA, as documented in a recent Government Accountability Office report.
The order provoked a hysterical response from both the architectural establishment and cultural elites. The New York Times editorial board, for example, published an attack on contemporary classical architecture titled, “What’s So Great About Fake Roman Temples?” Architecture professors and critics accused the order of being Hitlerian or promoting white supremacy.
President Joe Biden predictably rescinded the directive almost immediately on taking office, but Trump’s memorandum from last week makes plain that a revamped executive order is on its way. The president is keeping the promise he made in 2023 at CPAC to “get rid of bad and ugly buildings and return to the magnificent classical style of Western Civilization,” and aligning himself with the 2024 GOP platform, which pledges that “Republicans will promote beauty in Public Architecture,” “build cherished symbols of our Nation,” and make Washington, D.C. the “Most Beautiful Capital City.”
With this memorandum and the coming executive order, the Trump administration is poised to Make America Beautiful Again. Such an agenda would reform not only public architecture but also cultural agencies, such as the National Endowment for the Arts—the country’s largest arts funder, with a $210 million annual budget—which for too long have failed to foster art that invokes American greatness. Trump should see the NEA, in particular, as a vehicle for ennobling the United States and boosting our national prestige.
The president has indicated that his beautification campaign will even include infrastructure. Sean Duffy, his nominee to serve as secretary of transportation, would “prioritize Excellence, Competence, Competitiveness and Beauty when rebuilding America’s highways, tunnels, bridges and airports” (emphasis mine). Just two days after the election, Trump had a cordial phone call with New York governor Kathy Hochul, agreeing with her that the dismal, dangerous Penn Station can be made “beautiful” again. My organization, the National Civic Art Society, has long called for the building of a new classical station as grand as the original Beaux Arts structure that was demolished in 1963. Could the stars be aligning?
Trump’s aesthetic agenda could have dramatic consequences. Prior to the election, Trump stated that he wants the FBI, now headquartered in a decaying Brutalist structure, to get a new building at its current site on Pennsylvania Avenue, which runs between the Capitol and White House. The new structure, he wrote on Truth Social, would be the “CENTERPIECE” of his “PLAN TO TOTALLY RENOVATE AND REBUILD OUR CAPITAL CITY INTO THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND SAFEST ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD.” Given the looming executive order’s likely requirement that all new federal buildings in Washington be classical, the capital will likely get an enormous and inspiring classical building—one that could symbolize a bold era in both architecture and the republic in which it stands.
Photo by KENA BETANCUR/AFP via Getty Images
