Trump’s mandate on ‘Classical architecture’

As an architectural student in Philadelphia in the 1960’s, I used to come frequently to New York, arriving by train at the magnificent Pennsylvania Station, designed by the country’s most famous architects, McKim, Mead and White to recall the Baths of Caracalla in Rome. My architectural schooling happened to coincide with the planned destruction of Penn Station; every time I passed through this Beaux Arts masterpiece it was a little smaller as it suffered a ruthless demolition. The sad scene made even Jackie Kennedy, who went on to help establish the New York City Landmark Preservation Commission, cry.

I am totally in favor of historic preservation. But it is one thing to greatly admire outstanding architecture from the distant past but something totally different to try to recreate it. The world today is so very different from that of 1800 years again Rome that comparisons are difficult. Most everything was different then. And today a modern train station bears little similarity to an ancient public bath.

Like nearly all architects today, I was trained to avoid thinking about style until the project I was working on was well along. Instead I was taught to gather all the significant information that might influence the final design: available construction materials and methods, site characteristics and surroundings, functional elements and their optimal arrangements, access, circulation considerations, etc. Integrating these aspects and many others usually gets one well along towards a design. But starting with a style, a picture of the end result, shortchanges all the other very important considerations and leads to a weak end result lacking authenticity.

Near the end of his first term, Trump issued an executive order mandating that “classical” architecture be the official “style” for Federal government buildings.Shortly after his inauguration a few months later President Biden rescinded Trump’s E.O. In 2022, Congressional bills by Republican Sen. Marco Rubio and Rep. Jim Banks, now a Senator, reiterated the substance of Trump’s Executive Order.

A competing measure was introduced by Rep. Dina Titus based on guidelines carefully drawn up in 1962 by Patrick Moynihan that eschewed partisan sentiments. She noted that “Federal design guidelines should not confine all architecture to one point in history.” All three bills have languished in committees.

But a day after being sworn in for his second term, President Trump issued the following Executive Order:

“I hereby direct the Administrator of the General Services Administration in consultation with the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and the heads of departments and agencies and the United States where necessary to submit to me within 60 days recommendations to advance the policy that Federal public buildings should be visually identifiable as civic buildings and respect regional, traditional, and classical architectural heritage in order to uplift and beautify public spaces and and ennoble the United States and our system of self-government...”

Trump’s past attempts at being a ”master builder” have not been well received by architectural critics. Ada Louise Huxtable’s review of the Trump Tower in Manhattan was withering: “Even with all of its pricey superglitz, it is an uncomfortable proportioned in its narrow verticality, unredeemed by the posh ladies’ powder-room decor that totally lacks the cosmopolitan style to which it so aggressively aspires.”One might wonder if such comments might have helped trigger Trump’s Executive Order.

Both of Trump’s executive orders have been roundly criticized with harsh, albeit polite denunciations from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the American Society of Landscape Architects, the American Institute of Planners and the American Institute of Architects, not to mention thousands of letters from individual architects, nearly all of whom reiterated the idea expressed in the Moynihan document: “Design must flow from the architect to the government, not the other way around.”

Despite attempts to portray ancient Greek and Roman societies as democratic, they were far from it and their architecture expresses an autocratic society, not the more democratic sort we pride ourselves on.

In view of the momentous actions taken by the Trump administration in just its first few months, many readers may consider an Executive Order mandating a particular style of architectural design too trivial a matter for serious concern. But this mandate represents part of a larger, darker campaign to undo 250 years of democracy and shift nearly all power to the executive branch and the self-serving people now controlling it. If a dictator can determine the “style” of government buildings, where will it stop?

Architect and landscape designerMac Gordon lives in Lakeville.