Confinement makes us more aware of architecture, if only of that little sliver of space in which we find ourselves penned. But so long as we have the internet we can be, like Hamlet, “kings of infinite space,” and contemplate all of architecture at our leisure. Perhaps this is a good time to reconsider the most important architectural story of recent days, the revelation last month that the government is considering a policy preferring “the classical architectural style” for federal buildings in Washington “absent special extenuating factors necessitating another style.”

The...