Trump’s executive order re classical architecture in D.C - oh really??

 

President Donald Trump

United States Capitol (above) and J. Edgar Hoover Building (below) 

Getty

Early Draft, Executive Order, Feb 2020

Trump people were writing the Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture executive order for months. A White House official said polling showed a vast maj­or­ity of Amer­ic­ans prefer traditional designs. New construction should command respect by the general public who they serve and not just architectural elites, he/she said. 

This draft, dated Feb 2020, would have banned modernist design, prompt­ing condem­nation from the American Institute of Ar­chitects and National Trust for Historic Preservation. Ar­ch­it­ecture should be designed for the specific communities that it serves, reflecting the rich nation’s diverse places, thought, cul­ture and climates. The AIA strongly opposes uniform style mandates for federal arch­itecture. Architects are committed to honouring our past as well as reflecting our future progress, protecting the freedom of thought and expression that are essential to democracy, not mandating a return to classicism. 

And politicians criticised the administration. “Imposing a prefer­red architectural style for federal facil­it­ies runs counter to our nation’s democratic traditions,” Nevada Congress­woman Dina Titus wrote to GSA Administrator Emily Mur­phy. “Attempt­ing to imp­lem­ent this misguided mandate from Wash­ing­ton DC, by circum­vent­ing Cong­ress and gutting decades of GSA policy and pract­ice without any pub­lic notice or hearing is even worse.” Titus has introd­uced leg­isl­at­ion that would stop the GSA from blocking modernist designs! 

Even before the final order, there was already an emphasis placed on classical style. In Aug 2020, a solicitation for a new fed­er­al courthouse in Fort Lauderdale Fla. told architects that a trad­it­ional look would be the default style “absent special extenuating factors necessitating another style.” Ditto for the courthouse in Huntsville, Ala. 

Final E.O: Prom­oting Beautiful Fed­eral Civil Ar­ch­itecture 
10 months later, at the end of President Donald Trump’s term, the finish­ed order arrived. Its goal was that new Federal building designs should, like America’s beloved land-mark build­ings, uplift and beautify public spaces, inspire the hum­an spirit, ennoble the U.S, command respect from the general public, and respect the arch­itectural heritage of a reg­ion said executive order. They should also be visibly identifiable as civic build­ings. 

The executive order required the GSA to seek de­sign-input from the general public and future staff of federal buildings before choosing a design. The president signed the ex­ecut­ive order in late Dec 2020, making classical architecture the preferred style for fed­eral buildings in Washing­ton. 

Trump’s executive order denounced architect­ural mod­ern­ism, but it didn’t demand that all such proj­ects should be in the classical style. Rather it had to update the policies guiding Federal archit­ect­ure, ensuring that architects design­ing Federal buildings served the American people. 

The White House lauded the Founding Fathers, specifically George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, for wanting the country’s public buildings to inspire Americans and encourage civic vir­tue. For c150 years following America’s founding, America’s Federal architecture continued to be charact­erised by beautiful and beloved buildings. 

Its text extolled examples of clas­s­ical US public architecture in­cluding the Second Bank of the U.S in Phil­adelphia, Pioneer Court­house in Portland Oregon and the Thurgood Marsh­all U.S Courthouse in NY City. In Washington DC, classical buildings like the White House, Capitol building, Supreme Court, Department of the Treasury and Lincoln Memorial, have become iconic symbols of our system of gov­ernment. Encouraging classical and traditional arch­itecture does not ex­clude using most other styles, but care must be taken to ensure that all federal building designs command respect for their visual embodiment of America’s ideals. 

Lincoln Building

classical

Agriculture Building

classical

Hoover Building

brutalist

The order said in the 1950s the federal government replaced the trad­itional designs with modernist ones that led to unappealing, undistinguished buildings and often clashed with the existing classicism. It also regretted Federal Government buildings put up from the 1950s on, making a jarring mixture of classical and modernist designs.

In the order Trump blamed the General Services Administration-GSA for selecting designs from prominent architects, without regard to local input or aesthetic preferences. Saying the GSA must seek pub­lic and staff input on designs, the order also established a Pres­ident’s Council for Improving Federal Civic Archit­ect­ure, to updated GSA’s architectural guidelines. The Council will police, if not forbid outright any federal project “that diver­ges from the preferred architecture set forth in this order, includ­­ing mid-century Brutalist-style or de-constructivist architecture”.

The final order claimed that the advent of the Gen­eral Ser­vice Admin­istration’s Design Excellence Program in 1994 “sometimes impressed the architectural elite, but not the American people who the build­ings were meant to serve. Many of these new Federal buildings were not even visibly identifiable as civic buildings.”

Responses
Both the American Institute of Architects and the National Trust for Historic Preservation objected. Pulitzer prize-winning arch­itectural critic Paul Goldberger the problem was not with classical archit­ecture per se, but that the mandating of an official style was not fully compat­ible with C21st liberal democracy. The order was weakened from the original proposal and in any case is mostly symbolic.”  

All new federal buildings had to be "beautiful". Beautiful of course should be interp­ret­ed as class­ical, said Justin Shubow, president of the National Civ­ic Art Soc­iety and a great supporter of tradit­ional archit­ecture.  “Amer­icans have long und­er­stood that classical ar­chitecture is not only beaut­if­ul, it embod­ies the key values of our represent­ative govern­ment. Such inspiring build­ings conn­ect us to our herit­age and the design of federal build­ings should reflect the aesthetic and symbolic pre­ferences of the people they are built to serve, namely classical and tradit­ion­al architecture. Yet since the mid-C19th, Modernist mandarins cont­rol­ling government architecture have been forcing ugly designs upon us. Pres Trump stood firm for trad­ition and beau­ty in public arch­itect­ure”.

Two changes have already occurred in 2020. 1] Some federal projects in neoclassical style have been initiated, but when the incoming admin­istration takes over in Jan, Trump’s order may be deleted.  2] The terms of four commissioners of the U.S Commission of Fine Arts expired in Nov 2019 and the Trump admin­is­tration already appointed Shubow and two others for four-year terms!  What a nightmare :(