Neoclassical architecture as government architecture

I haven't written about this go around with the Trump Administration's promotion of neoclassical architecture for government buildings ("MAKING FEDERAL ARCHITECTURE BEAUTIFUL AGAIN," White House, "The White House issues executive order mandating classical and traditional architectural design for federal buildings," Architect's Newspaper).  From the article:

The EO specifically applies to “all federal courthouses and agency headquarters,” “all federal public buildings in the National Capital Region,” and “all other federal public buildings that cost or are expected to cost more than $50 million in 2025 dollars to design.”

Deconstructivist and Brutalist styles are no good, this EO declares. Instead, other styles—and their practitioners—should be emulated. Architects to aspire to, the EO states, are Alberti, Brunelleschi, Michelangelo, and Palladio; Enlightenment masters Robert Adam, John Soane, and Christopher Wren; and 19th-century architects Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Robert Mills, and Thomas U. Walter.

Department of Labor headquarters.

Then again, you can always gussy up a newer building with a banner promoting Trump.

He promulgated a similar order towards the end of his first term, too late to make an impact.  

I wonder about the impact anyway since the Administration is focused on the sell off of federal properties, is discarding leases of property, etc. ("The Trump administration took down a list of 400-plus federal buildings it might sell. Here’s what was on it," Boston Globe).

Although some of this is legitimate, as properties age the cost of rehabilitation may exceed the cost of building new ("The federal government could soon sell these three big downtown Boston buildings," Boston Globe).

Although there are good examples of the new, I actually favor the concept because so much of the modern architecture for government buildings feels cold to me.  And there is the monumentality of classical architecture that projects government, and to me civic identity.  That's what I believe the City Beautiful Movement was about, according to Kathleen Lamp:

According to historian Jon Peterson, City Beautiful was a progressive-era urban planning and beautification movement that brought together municipal art (sometimes called “decoration”), outdoor art (landscape architecture), comprehensive city planning, and city services (city water, sewer, trash and snow removal).

Those are the elements of urban design and placemaking that I've advocated for since the start of the blog.

Generally, architecture and planning communities don't favor the proposal, wanting there to be the possibility of innovation and new forms of monumentality incorporated in new buildings, to be constructed of their time, rather than the period of 1895-1930 or so.

Old Courthouse in St. Louis, with the Gateway Arch in the background.  

New York Times photo.

Kriston Capps wrote about it for Bloomberg some time ago, "Trump's Politics of Urban Disgust," where he discusses Trump's campaign for remaking the capital.  We've heard of plans for a new ballroom for the White House, eradication of the Rose Garden at the White House, the design related executive order, and other interventions.  

President Donald Trump addresses a dinner for donors who have contributed to build the new ballroom at the White House, Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/John McDonnell)

Today we learn that Trump wants to build another crazy scheme, an Arc de Triomphe by the Lincoln Memorial ("Trump plans to leave his mark on Washington by building a Paris-like arch near the Lincoln Memorial," AP).

This idea of the neoclassical is a revival of the City Beautiful movement, with monumental white marble neoclassical buildings, often in the form of a campus. 

Given that Union Station in DC is an example, I've favored the concept.  The station is vibrant inside and out, even if to some the building may appear to be a mausoleum from the outside.  (The old Main Post Office building to the left of the Station is also neo-classical in design.  New stations of the time were often built with post office buildings next door to facilitate transfer of mail to the railroad postal cars.)

OTOH, there is the Cleveland City Beautiful campus with an auditorium and other buildings, and at least when I experienced it, it felt cold and empty even if the buildings are attractive.  This was the root of the criticism of the movement by Jane Jacobs, big buildings, large spaces not amenable to use and people.

Cleveland Mall, Cleveland, Oh - Photos by Janelle D'Avignon, 2023

But strictly design-wise, rather than from the placemaking standpoint, it's pretty cool.

I hate to admit I wasn't familiar with scholarship on the movement looking at the South's implementation of City Beautiful which was used to cement the Lost Cause ideology through statuary and urban renewal of black areas, such as in Charlottesville, Virginia.(Also see "Tools of Displacement," Slate.)

Note that for a long time, I did recognize DC's Union Station was an early form of urban renewal as it wiped out a poor community--Italian and Irish, not black, called Swampoodle, through the construction of the large railyard behind the station. 

Railyard, 1977.

These days, the parking lots to the right are all redeveloped as part of the NoMA district ("Union Station in Washington Has a Grand Development Plan," New York Times, "NoMa: The Neighborhood That Transit Built," Urban Land).

Photo: Drew Angerer, New York Times.

Same with the federal government's campaign to replace or eliminate alley dwellings on the interior of blocks, which were often domiciles for low income blacks, and of course the Southwest Urban Renewal program.

Trump's association with neoclassical likely dooms support from progressives, especially because after the City Beautiful period the adherents were dictators ("The good, the bad and the ugly – neoclassical architecture in modern times," Apollo Magazine).