Is neoclassicism about to make a big comeback?

It looks likely, as a new executive order under consideration by President Donald Trump attempts to make classicism the "preferred and default style" for new and upgraded federal buildings.

According to an exclusive report by Architectural Record, the predictably named "Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again" executive order would seek to reposition classically inspired architecture as the country's default public building style. The shift comes in opposition to the longstanding style agnosticism displayed by public buildings in recent decades following the creation of the Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture directive crafted in 1962 by former New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

Moynihan's directive—which states that "The development of an official style must be avoided" and that "Design must flow from the architectural profession to the Government and not vice versa"—has resulted in a wide ranging set of innovative public building projects that embrace contemporary design strategies and material approaches, including the SOM-designed New United States Court House in Los Angeles, Morphosis's San Francisco Federal Building, and the United States Courthouse in Austin, Texas designed by Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects.

The Morphosis-designed San Francisco Federal Building. Image courtesy of Wikimedia user Eric in SF.

But as many architectural observers might note, President Trump's taste in architecture hews more toward the pedimented than the streamlined, as the classically ordered, chintzy-but-low-ceilinged interiors of his Trump Tower condominium make clear. According to Architectural Record, which has reviewed a copy of the draft executive order, recent federal building projects carried out by the General Services Administration have been unable to imbue "our national values into Federal buildings" and that moving forward, styles like Brutalism and Deconstructivism will "fail to satisfy" the new proposed requirements "and shall not be used." The document, according to Architectural Record, goes on to explicitly call out the Morphosis-designed Federal Building and the Austin courthouse as having "little aesthetic appeal."

The shift comes as the Chief Architect and Director of the Design Excellence Program, David Insigna, resigned his post last week and as the president adds a collection of new architectural classicists to the United States Commission of Fine Arts, the body that weighs in on the design of federal buildings in Washington, D.C.

In addition, President Trump recently named airport engineer J. Brett Blanton as the new Architect of the Capitol. Blanton was sworn in last week and will lead, among many responsibilities, the renovations of the Cannon House Office Building Renewal Project, a $100 million set of upgrades for a 111-year-old Beaux Arts style office complex originally designed by New York City architects Carrère and Hastings.

Classicism's complicated legacy

The President’s potential executive order comes as the latest salvo in an increasingly complex intellectual battle over the merits of traditional and modern architectures that has played out online over recent years.

Online, traditional architecture enthusiasts, white suprematists, and other groups have aligned their shared passions for classical aesthetics with sordid nationalist politics to consistently weaponize classical motifs under a variety of nativist mantles. Increasingly, classical orders, fluted columns, and dentilled cornices have come to symbolize not simply solid, timeless architectural motifs but also the “Whites Only” idealized version of the past these groups seek to celebrate today. As in other facets of federal policy, President Trump’s long-running embrace of nativist politics is, with the potential executive order, gesturing toward and growing to absorb these discourses into the country’s legal and regulatory apparatuses.

Previously on Archinect: How early architects leveraged the preservation of public buildings to assert their professional expertise. How did the American Institute of Architects leverage historic preservation to increase its own stature? Shown: An 1846 photo of the White House taken by John Plumbe. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

As Archinect reported last week, the relationship between architects and federal building projects has a long history in the United States and has often served to define both the image of the nation and the practice of architecture itself.

The period after the American Civil War represents a key moment in this history, as does the following period under the New Deal. During this latter period, as the nation’s popular Beaux Arts architectural styles jostled with ascendant Streamline and Moderne stylings for popular relevance and appeal, the federal government, through large-scale public works and countless public-private partnerships with architects in nearly every corner of the country via the Public Works Administration, brought into being a new style that fused the two competing modes: Depression Moderne.

The Federal Reserve Headquarters building in Washington, D.C., designed by Paul Cret. Image courtesy of Wikimedia user AgnosticPreachersKid.

Architects like Paul Cret, Waddy Butler Wood, and McKim, Mead, and White, worked to fuse the classical proportioning and decorative flourish of the Beaux Arts styles with modern steel frame and concrete construction to create buildings that strove simultaneously to embody the lofty ideals of the resurgent American government with the no-frills and people-powered economic promise of the New Deal.

Of these architects it was perhaps Paul Cret who had the most long lasting and impactful career though his work on the Federal Reserve Headquarters complex in Washington, D.C. and on a variety of war memorials he helped to create and design.

Ultimately, Cret’s influence would perhaps be too great, as in the decade that followed, notorious Nazi architect Albert Speer famously co-opted Cret’s uniquely American design contributions to design the Nazi regime’s aesthetic building agenda, including the Reichsparteitagsgelände Nazi rally grounds in Nuremberg, Germany.

With Trump’s embrace of classical architecture, perhaps the influence has come full circle.