Make America Beautiful Again
Editor's Note
Our founders looked to the wellspring of classical tradition not just for the forms of their constitution but for the forms of the very buildings they erected. Justin Shubow, president of the National Civic Art Society, suggests that the two are inseparable: that beauty, the proper end of public art, directs us toward the higher ends of politics and of man.
As Shubow writes, classical architecture is a tangible illustration of the virtues of our regime, a constant reminder of the history of our Republic and the seriousness of citizenship therein. The defense and promulgation of these symbols, therefore, is vital to countering those who seek to erase that tradition and tear down that regime.
The Victorian art critic John Ruskin thought that “every form of noble architecture is in some sort the embodiment of the Polity, Life, History, and the Religious Faith of nations.” It makes sense, then, that throughout history statesmen and other leaders have concerned themselves with the design of symbolically important edifices. Unsurprisingly, when there exists disagreement about political and cultural values, the choice of architecture of noble buildings — including civic buildings — becomes a contested issue. But the intensity of past debates pales in comparison with the debate over political architecture today.
That tension became evident with President Trump’s Executive Order on Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture, which he promulgated at the end of his term. The directive represented a revolution in federal architecture: it re-oriented government architecture, which had been almost entirely modernist since the 1950s, to classical and traditional design. The order emphasized the importance of beautiful political architecture and required that new designs be admired by the general public. While the order did not ban all modernist architecture, it stated that classical and traditional architecture — defined broadly, to include anything from Greek Revival to Art Deco — was the preferred architecture for federal buildings across the country. For federal buildings in Washington, D.C., that preference for classical architecture was made a requirement.
The order extolled the beauty of classical architecture and noted that it has long inspired ordinary Americans. It also reminded the public that the Founding Fathers “sought to use classical architecture to visually connect our contemporary Republic with the antecedents of democracy in classical antiquity, reminding citizens not only of their rights but also their responsibilities in maintaining and perpetuating its institutions.” Thomas Jefferson, architect of the Virginia Capitol, one of the seminal classical buildings in early America, was inspired by the Maison Carrée, an ancient Roman temple in Nîmes, France. The poet Robert Penn Warren imagined how Jefferson might have described that temple:
. . . a shape that shines, . . .
. . . so wrought and innocent of imprecision
That a man who hoped to be a man, and be free
Might enter in, and all his mind would glow
Like a coal under the breath, in that precinct
Where the correctness of our human aspiration
Has body and abides and bespeaks the charmed space.
In a 1784 letter to a 28-year-old John Trumbull, who would later mature into the lauded “painter of the American Revolution,” Edmund Burke emphasized the precedence of public edifices in a new country: “You belong to a young nation, which will soon want public buildings; these must be erected before the decorations of painting and sculpture will be required. … Qualify yourself to superintend their erection. Decorate them also, if you will.”
Like the Virginia Capitol, buildings such as the U.S. Capitol, Treasury Department, and Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse in New York City demonstrate the exceptional qualities of classical architecture: its beauty, harmony, and timelessness stem from its symmetry, balance, organized complexity, ornament and detailing, capacity for grandeur without arrogance, evocation of order without capital-R Rationalism, and grounding in human proportion and human experience.
Classical architecture is not just about unparalleled aesthetic excellence; it is the architecture of American democracy, the style most associated with our system of government and our highest ideals, the architecture of civic virtue. It is also an architecture conducive to the rootedness of the polis, of the mutual bonds of citizenship extending across generations. In an era of presentism, classical architecture encourages Americans to think in centuries. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan told the Senate in 1983, “We must not preserve buildings out of a fear that we have lost the ability to create things of grace and beauty. … I wish to preserve things as an example of what we were and will be, not what we were and longer can be.”
Classical public buildings make us feel proud of our country; they make us confident in our dignity as citizens of a great Republic. As art historian Vincent Scully said about New York’s original Pennsylvania Station, a Beaux Arts masterpiece inspired by an ancient Roman public bath, “One entered the city like a god.” Modernist architecture diminishes us; it would have us forget the past. Epitomizing Modernism, Brutalist public buildings thunder at us, “Mortal Man, Thou Art Nothing.”
We must preserve classical architecture most of all because it is ours. While there are other noble styles around the world, it is American classicism that is our heritage. It perpetuates and strengthens our wise system of government; unlike in countries such as France, now in its Fourth Republic, America has had only one regime, a single Republic that extends back to the War of Independence. In the face of those who wish to tear down that regime, we must protect and construct edifices that symbolize it.
We must not forget that an everlasting Republic is buttressed by sempiternal beauty. Unlike so many modernist architects, who design and judge buildings according to criteria such as their rectilinearity; exposed structure; frank use of modern materials, especially steel, glass, and reinforced concrete; minimalism; machine aesthetic; functionalism, strikingness of form; sublimity, and repetitive modularity — or even non-aesthetic architectural criteria such as “authenticity,” the “poetics of tectonics,” and the designer’s intent — classical architects aim for beauty. During the Renaissance, the rediscovery of the architecture of Greco-Roman antiquity, Leon Battista Alberti defined beauty as “that reasoned harmony of all the parts within a body, so that nothing may be added, taken away, or altered, but for the worse.” More recently, in the Beaux Arts era around the turn of the 19th century, the architect Charles McKim addressed the members of his firm designing the new classical campus of Columbia University: “Young men, the thing of first importance in architecture — is beauty.”
Contrast this foundation with the influential avant-garde architect Peter Eisenman, who said in 2016, “I am not interested in beauty.” Or consider that the Pritzker Prize-winning architect Rem Koolhaas said that his design for the frightening headquarters of CCTV, the official Chinese communist state television channel, “violates some of the most sincerely held convictions about logic and beauty.” Koolhaas has also denigrated architectural beauty and harmony for providing a “false sense of existential security.” For architects such as Eisenman and Koolhaas, a building’s ugliness can be a positive attribute.
It should be no surprise, then, that Trump’s directive was pummeled by the architectural establishment, including the American Institute of Architects, a pro-modernist trade organization that took a political swipe at Trump in 2016 not long after he was elected. Other cultural elites contributed to the pile on. In an editorial titled “What’s So Great About Fake Roman Temples?” the New York Times fulminated, “How can anyone imagine that erecting knockoffs of ancient buildings from other cultures would serve to demonstrate the dignity, enterprise and vigor of our republic?”
There was also a chorus of denunciation from “experts” in academia. Reinhold Martin, a professor of architecture at Columbia University, told the Times, “This is an effort to use culture to send coded messages about white supremacy and political hegemony.” Similarly, Swarthmore art history professor Brian Goldstein tweeted, “this is more red meat in [Trump’s] ever widening culture war. It’s advancing an idea of the U.S. in the tradition of Western Civilization against all those weird ideas of modernism. It’s about whiteness.” Samia Henni, an architecture professor at Cornell, declared:
Imported by Europeans from Western Europe, [classical architecture] testifies to a colonial presence in a colonized territory. In addition to fortifying conservatism and Eurocentrism incarnate in U.S.-centrism, and undermining design freedom and contemporaneity, the order eulogizes the massacres of Native Americans, enslaved African people, and other oppressed communities to ultimately reinforce white supremacy.
Predictably, establishment architecture critics have also howled about the supposed reactionary politics of classicism. Robert Bevan, for instance, wrote in Dezeen, “with honourable exceptions, traditional architecture has become part of the war of position, to use Antonio Gramsci’s term, for the right and far-right who are using it to open a new front in the culture wars that is hostile to difference and the cosmopolitan.”
While there have been numerous calls for tearing down statues said to embody white supremacy — and in 2021 a statue of Thomas Jefferson was actually removed from New York City Hall by the metropolis’s Public Design Commission — so far I have not heard any calls to demolish existing “white supremacist” classical buildings, which would presumably include the Jefferson Memorial and U.S. Supreme Court. Time will tell.
In any event, if support for classical architecture is a dog whistle for white supremacy, it’s hard to understand why a majority of black Americans prefer classical and traditional architecture for federal buildings and U.S. courthouses, as found in a 2020 survey performed by the Harris Poll for the National Civic Art Society. The survey found a wide preference for classical and traditional design across all demographic groups, including education level, socioeconomic status, and political party affiliation (72% of Republicans, 70% of Democrats).
Either unaware of such (unsurprising) facts or in defiance of them, soon after taking office, President Biden rescinded Trump’s Order without providing any explanation. Trump’s directive has had lingering effects, however. Last year, bicameral legislation that would codify Trump’s executive order — the Beautifying Federal Civic Architecture Act — was introduced in Congress by Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL). So far, the Senate co-sponsors include J.D. Vance (R-OH), Bill Hagerty (R-TN), and Mike Lee (R-UT). Vance, now Trump’s running mate, tweeted in 2022, “Our towns and cities don’t have to be ugly. We used to create small businesses that last and beautiful public buildings.”
The Republican Party itself has taken a stance on the issue. Under the heading “Restore American Beauty,” the 2024 GOP platform pledges that “Republicans will promote beauty in Public Architecture. … We will build cherished symbols of our Nation.…” The platform also commits Republicans to making Washington, D.C. the “most beautiful capital city.” Though elites trained in an anti-tradition strain to force the modernist project on our federal façade, Trump’s directive and the platform offer hope of a return to an architecture that is distinctly American in both style and spirit.
It remains to be seen what will happen in Congress or the White House — or even state government — but public architecture is now in play politically, and American democracy should be a beautiful thing.