‘God-Knows-What-Kind-of-Classic’

On January 20, 2025, the day of his swearing-in, Stephen Ehikian, the new head of the General Services Administration—the agency responsible for overseeing, among other things, the design of government buildings—received a memorandum from the White House directing him to submit “recommendations to advance the policy that [new] Federal public buildings should be visually identifiable as civic buildings and respect regional, traditional, and classical architectural heritage.” The memo was titled, “Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture.” Well, who could argue with that?

Many people, it turned out. The American Institute of Architects responded sternly: “AIA supports freedom in design and is extremely concerned about any revisions that remove control from local communities or mandate official federal design preferences that hinder design freedom.” Since the White House memo specifically mentioned “procedures for incorporating community input into Federal building design selections,” the concern about community control seems misplaced. As for defending design freedom, that sounds noble, like defending freedom of speech, but an architect is not a soapbox orator—and never has been.

In 1664, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV’s chief minister, invited Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the most celebrated artist in Europe, to design the new wing of the Louvre Palace. Bernini spent five months in Paris, sculpted a bust of the king, drew up plans for the palace, and, following a formal cornerstone-laying ceremony, returned to Rome. Construction did not commence immediately, however. Colbert was not satisfied with Bernini’s proposal, and two years later, he formed a French team to prepare a brand-new design; the result was the magnificent east front of the Louvre. Another example. In 1907, the fabulously wealthy Harold McCormick of Chicago hired Frank Lloyd Wright to design an immense country house on Lake Michigan. It was Wright’s largest residential commission to date, but McCormick’s strong-willed wife, Edith, a daughter of John D. Rockefeller, took one look at the plans and nixed the project. “It is very nice for the mountains,” she said, “but hardly the thing for Lake Forest.” A year later, Charles Adams Platt was commissioned to design a beautiful Italianate villa and garden that were more to her taste. The architectural client, unlike the customer, may not always be right, but she always has the last word.

In December 2020, in the final weeks of the first Trump administration, the White House issued an executive order (later withdrawn by the Biden administration) aimed at promoting classical architecture as the official style for new federal buildings in Washington, D.C., and for new federal courthouses elsewhere. The reaction of the architectural media to the present memorandum has been equally alarmist. There are few objections to respecting regional and traditional heritage; it is the word classical that rankles. “Classical Architecture Mandate for Federal Buildings is Back on the Table as Trump Returns to the West Wing,” read the headline in Architectural Record. “Trump Reinstates Executive Order Mandating ‘Classical’ Architecture for Government Buildings,” read the ARTnews headline. “Trump signs order mandating classical design for new federal buildings,” echoed Britain’s Architects’ Journal.

The headlines were deceptive. There is no new executive order and no mandate—or at least, not yet. The memo in question was a presidential action, a lesser form of directive generally lacking legal force. It is unclear exactly how regional, traditional, and classical heritage are to be respected. Whereas regional and traditional are fuzzy terms, most people have a distinct image of what is meant by classical—big Roman columns. Indeed, many of the alarmist articles about the White House memo were illustrated with photographs of Washington landmarks such as the White House or the Supreme Court Building. But are monumental porticoes and Corinthian columns really what classicism is about?