Trump revives his push to make federal architecture ‘classical’ again

President Donald Trump’s sweeping efforts to remake the federal government extend even to the buildings that house it, as he revives his fight against modern and contemporary architecture, and pushes for federal buildings to be designed largely in neoclassical styles that he has said “command respect.”

In a memorandum published on Inauguration Day, Trump said he wants federal architecture to “respect regional, traditional, and classical architectural heritage.” The language echoed an executive order during his first administration, in which he declared classical architecture - described broadly by Trump as styles derived from ancient Greece and Rome - as “the preferred and default architecture for Federal public buildings” in D.C.

With the renewed effort, Trump’s administration is pulling even the skylines of U.S. cities into the country’s unending culture wars - where the battle is not really between polished marble and raw concrete.

The American Institute of Architects responded in a Jan. 21 statement that it is “extremely concerned” about any changes that hinder design freedom, adding that federal buildings “must reflect America’s wealth of culture, rich traditions, and unique geographic regions.”

Meanwhile, Justin Shubow, a first-term Trump appointee to the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts and president of the National Civic Art Society nonprofit, cheered on the president’s push to “Make Federal Architecture Great Again” on social media.

Daniel Abramson, a professor of American and European architecture at Boston University, noted that while Trump’s previous executive order “valued state authority, collective pride, and European tradition,” architects have “responded by talking about American values of diversity and individual creativity.”

“People get so emotional about it,” he said, “because it does actually get at what they think the country’s identity should be.”

Recognizable for its columns, grand scale and simple geometric forms, neoclassical architecture draws from the architectural principles of classical antiquity, emphasizing order and symmetry. Neoclassical federal architecture in the United States goes back to the Founding Fathers, who strove to build a “new Rome” on the Potomac. Such styles - seen in the Lincoln Memorial and the Capitol building, itself named for Rome’s Capitoline Hill - were the dominant form of government buildings for much of American history.

Modernism took off after World War I, challenging traditional ideas of beauty. Brutalist structures - such as the doughnut-shaped Hirshhorn Museum and the weighty Department of Energy building, defined by their abundant use of raw concrete - won adherents among designers and in the government in the mid-20th century for their affordable building materials and monumental look, while dividing public opinion.

International Style, Deconstructivism and other modern and contemporary movements also took hold, contributing to the diverse architecture we see across government buildings today.

In 2020, Trump lamented the embrace of modernism and said that outside of a few buildings - such as the neoclassical Tuscaloosa Federal Building and Courthouse - the government has “largely stopped building beautiful buildings.” But Elizabeth Thill, a professor of classical studies at Indiana University at Indianapolis, said Trump’s administration treats “beautiful” like it is an objective term.

“They think you can define ‘beautiful’ architecturally … and that it is Greco-Roman aesthetics,” she said. “But why is Greco-Roman architecture considered more beautiful as opposed to the Taj Mahal? Why aren’t we imitating that? Or all of the beautiful buildings in Japan?”

The campaign for neoclassical architecture, she said, is, “a way of pushing, consciously or unconsciously, a certain vision of the past that is favorable to them.” That vision - “elitist, Western-leaning, pro-Christian,” as Thill describes it - has been embraced by the broader conservative movement, but is based largely on misunderstanding, she said.

For example, as Thill explains, ancient Greek and Roman architecture would have been “garishly colored with red, blue and gold” - not the white seen around the U.S. capital, Thill said.

“The aesthetics and the history that they’re citing are cherry picked and kind of incorrect,” she said, “but the idea that architecture was used as a sign of cultural supremacy and chauvinism, that is true.”

For all Trump has touted neoclassical architecture, most of his own towers are modern, and he hasn’t always decried the sleeker buildings of today. The president once called 20th-century architect Philip Johnson “hot” - and Johnson even designed for him a never-realized, 60-story castle that the architect said was “very Trumpish.”

Still, Trump’s 2020 order on architecture dovetailed with his pitch to Americans. He has been known to discredit expertise, and the order specifically pitted the “architectural establishment” against the general public. Two brutalist behemoths he identified for criticism - the Housing and Urban Development and Health and Human Services buildings - are also headquarters for social services, which he and his allies have advocated for cutting.

More recently, as Trump has become increasingly critical of law enforcement agencies, he’s gone after the FBI building, writing on social media that a new FBI headquarters should “be the centerpiece of my plan to totally renovate and rebuild our capital city.”

It remains to be seen how that plan will take shape, but it is already flattening conversations about architecture, said Abramson, the Boston University professor.

It “becomes a discussion about whether you’re for or against Trump,” he said. “There are lot of people who are liberal, progressive Democrats and don’t like concrete brutalist buildings … But now are they going to be able to say that?”