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).

Quimbyism: sign me up!

A book I need to read.  Yes to the City: Millennials and the Fight for Affordable Housing

We've heard of NIMBY -- not in my backyard -- and YIMBY -- yes in my backyard -- abbreviations for different factions in communities opposed to or supportive of development.

A few years ago, Michael Mehaffy a prominent new urbanist, came up with the term, QUIMBY ("Never mind NIMBY and YIMBY–it’s time for ‘QUIMBY’ urbanism We need a major rethink of gentrification and affordability challenges if we’re going to get anywhere," Public Square), for "quality in my backyard" in part because YIMBYs don't seem to be too clued into quality, just building.

This comes up a lot with criticism of historic preservation as a limiter of development, or a stalking horse to stop development.  OTOH, there are a lot more areas of cities not zoned for preservation than for preservation.  

So most cities have plenty of build out capacity in commercial districts, transit catchment areas, reproduction of institutional lands, etc.

It happens that the neighborhoods that many people want to live in are typical of those that are designated historic, such as rowhouse neighborhoods in New York City, Baltimore, DC and Richmond.  YIMBYs basically argue for tearing down historic housing in favor of building more, to meet current demand, not recognizing that the new housing will be even more expensive because it is built at today's pricing for land, labor, materials, and financing.

To me, this is a perfect example of YIMBY housing on Sherman Avenue NW in DC, adjacent to housing that is eligible for historic designation but isn't designated, hence there are no design standards or processes to ensure compatible development.

Anyway, I commented on a recent post on the Pro-Urb list that QUIMBYISM could help us solve a problem of lack of congruence with multiple movements all addressing an element of what makes urbanism and urban living so attractive, by providing the glue that could join them in an agglomerated movement:

• Historic Preservation
• New Urbanism
• Urban design and placemaking (including Project for Public Spaces concepts)
• Walkability-15 Minute City concepts
• Sustainable mobility
• City Beautiful.  

This too, in NE DC near H Street NE and Hechinger Mall, in a rowhouse neighborhood that is eligible for historic preservation designation.  

These kinds of examples are why I argue that the entire city should be treated as a historic district ("Treating an entire city as a heritage area/conservation district, rather than a neighborhood by neighborhood approach," 2020).

On the other hand, this is an example of good, quality oriented infill development in a historic district and yes it costs more.  

It's a row of four or five new builds constructed on the 500 block of East Capitol NE (a tony housing district in DC).  

Ironically, they were built on a parking lot that was created by the Capitol Hill Baptist Church in the 1970s, by tearing down a beloved neighborhood restaurant, Mary's Blue Room  ("Losing my religion," 2008).

This action sparked the creation of a local historic preservation ordinance, providing protection against non-federal property owners, when the National Register Historic Districts designation process created by the 1968 National Historic Preservation Act only provides protections against federal undertakings.

But as Stephen Semes writes in Future of the Past: A Conservation Ethic for Architecture, Urbanism, and Historic Preservation, "the architecture of the ensemble" and maintaining neighborhood design coherence should be our priority.

"Maintaining a broad stylistic consistency in traditional settings is not a matter of 'nostalgia,'" he says. "It's a matter of common sense, of reinforcing the sense of place that made a building or neighborhood special to begin with. But many academically trained preservationists want to impose their inevitably subjective notions of what the architecture 'of our time' is."

Modern rowhouses in Capitol Hill, Seattle

Historic era rowhouses in Pittsburgh (I don't know if they are designated)

Typical new construction apartment design.  This is in Lakeland, Florida.

The value of civic identity in civic buildings

Is discussed in "Assessments," a column by Alan Ehrenhalt in the January issue of Governing Magazine. From the article:

As you have probably heard, we are soon about to embark on another federal stimulus program aimed at heading off (or at least softening) another economic collapse. A large proportion of the stimulus money, perhaps most of it, will be given to states and localities to spend on infrastructure. When people use the word "infrastructure" these days, they nearly always mean roads and bridges, or, as the phrase invariably goes, "crumbling roads and bridges." But I wonder whether some of that money might be set aside for public buildings, either for renovating them or to help pay for something new that is as good as the Houston City Hall.
Government buildings, whether they house a city council, a county board, or a state legislature, are the tangible manifestation of American democracy. From a civics perspective, it makes all the sense in the world to invest in doing them well, as Roosevelt and the WPA generally did. Would this make short-term economic sense? I can't say I know the answer. But I think the question is worth asking.

THERE WAS A TIME in America when almost every big city felt it a matter of obligation and pride to build an imposing edifice for conducting public business. Odd as it may seem, I was reminded of this when I saw "Milk," the new fictionalized film biography of Harvey Milk, the gay activist and city supervisor who was assassinated, along with Mayor George Moscone, in San Francisco in 1978. Most of the audience was riveted on the uncanny acting of Sean Penn, who played the title role. I was, too. But I also was struck by the performance of a supporting character, one that did not act, speak or even move. It was the San Francisco City Hall.

As it appears in the movie, San Francisco's city hall is awe-inspiring — so immense and beautiful that you almost think you are looking at the capitol of a sovereign nation, rather than the seat of local government in a city that never reached a population of a million people. Two full blocks square, with an elaborate grand staircase and the fifth-largest dome in the world, it seems to beg for an emperor, rather than a mayor and 11 district supervisors.

-- Check out these city hall buildings