Why Does Donald Trump Like Neoclassical Architecture So Much?

On 21 December 2020, President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order titled “Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture,” which officially establishes the Neoclassical architectural style as the “preferred” style for all United States federal buildings. The same executive order disparages Modernist architecture as “ugly and inconsistent.”

In practical terms, Trump’s executive order doesn’t mean much, since it only establishes the Neoclassical style as a “preferred” style and does not outright ban other styles. Moreover, the executive order is almost certainly going to go in the paper shredder as soon as President-Elect Joe Biden assumes office on 20 January 2021.

Nonetheless, the fact that Trump apparently felt strongly enough about Neoclassical architecture to issue an executive order on the subject right before he leaves office raises all sorts of interesting questions about what Neoclassical architecture represents in a modern political context and why a man like Donald Trump would devote time to enshrine it as a “preferred style” for anything.

The audience Trump is trying to appeal to

Donald Trump is not a very intellectual or artistic person. He has, after all, repeatedly tried to defund the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Moreover, I see little evidence to suggest that Trump has any kind of deep personal artistic passion for Neoclassical architecture. After all, most of Trump’s own buildings are not outwardly constructed in any kind of Neoclassical architectural style and Trump Tower itself is thoroughly Modernist in its exterior design. As far as I can tell, then, Trump’s reasons for making the executive order right now seem to be primarily political.

In order to understand what Trump is doing, we need to know who he is doing it for. In order to understand the audience Trump is trying to appeal to, we need to understand how architecture—even very beautiful architecture—can be used as a kind of racist dog whistle. To illustrate this, I’d like to use a specific example.

Over the course of 2020, several accounts on Twitter with names including the word “traditionalist” that almost exclusively post photographs of works of architecture in older European styles have amassed large numbers of followers. At first glance, these accounts might seem to be only interested in promoting beautiful architecture, but, in reality, they are promoting white supremacy and fascism.

The account “Western Traditionalist,” with the Twitter handle “Western_Trad,” was created in May 2020. As of the time I am writing this, the account has a whopping 70,800 followers. The name of the account is already a strong hint that the owner is a white supremacist, since, as I discuss in this article from February 2020, the word “western” is commonly used among conservatives and white supremacists as a euphemism for “white.”

Another hint comes from the fact that the profile picture for the account is a photograph of Michelangelo’s Statue of David. White supremacists and members of the far right are especially obsessed with this particular statue because it depicts an extremely buff naked man, whom they perceive as racially “white,” and it is carved from white marble. White supremacists therefore perceive it as encapsulating the ideal of white masculinity.

ABOVE: Screenshot of the so-called “Western Traditionalist” Twitter profile

These white supremacists, however, would probably be shocked to learn that Michelangelo’s creation of this statue almost certainly had very little to do with any kind of notions about supposed white racial superiority and a lot more to do with the fact that it is extremely likely that Michelangelo was sexually attracted to men.

Michelangelo never married and is not recorded to have ever had any kind of romantic or sexual relationship with any woman. He did, however, have multiple intimate relationships with men over the course of his life. He even wrote extensive homoerotic love poems addressed to some of these male friends, in which he describes his desire for them using very carnal language.

Not only was the sculptor probably sexually attracted to men, but perhaps the subject as well. Many readers throughout history—including perhaps even Michelangelo himself—have interpreted David’s relationship with Jonathan as homosexual. In the First Book of Samuel 20:41, the two men are described as kissing each other and crying together and, in the Second Book of Samuel 1:26, David declares that he loved Jonathan more than any woman.

I genuinely think that it would be far more accurate to interpret Michelangelo’s Statue of David as a work of gay expression than as a work of white supremacy. Unfortunately, this hasn’t stopped white supremacists from using the statue all over the place in their propaganda.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of Michelangelo’s Statue of David in Florence

Moving on, if you scroll down through the so-called “Western Traditionalist” Twitter profile, you quickly discover that the account is constantly heaping lavish praise on works of architecture in older styles that are generally regarded as being of European origin.

For instance, a tweet dated to 19 November 2020 asserts, “No structure on Earth compares to the Gothic cathedral.”

ABOVE: Screenshot of a tweet from the so-called “Western Traditionalist” Twitter account

A pair of photographs of the Palais Garnier in Paris posted on 3 December 2020 are accompanied by the description “Timeless Beauty.”

ABOVE: Screenshot of a tweet from the so-called “Western Traditionalist” Twitter account

Similarly, a photograph of a view of the city of Salzburg, Austria, posted on 21 December 2020 is accompanied by the description “Objective Beauty.”

ABOVE: Screenshot of a tweet from the so-called “Western Traditionalist” Twitter account

There’s nothing inherently fascist or white supremacist about appreciating European architecture. It is only white supremacy when someone starts claiming that European architecture is inherently better than the architecture produced by all other cultures outside of Europe. This is something that the “Western Traditionalist” does constantly.

Moreover, revealingly, the “Western Traditionalist” never under any circumstances offers any kind of praise for non-European architectural styles. If the account mentions any work of non-European architecture, it does so only to denigrate it. The account also spends a large amount of time attacking modern styles of architecture, denouncing them as ugly and degraded.

Thus, it becomes clear that the account is making a soft sell for white supremacy. By promoting and praising older styles of European architecture as examples of “timeless” and “objective beauty” while disparaging other styles of architecture, the owner of the account is clearly trying to convince people that white people are the supreme race and that works of architecture supposedly created by white people are naturally superior to all other works of architecture.

It is, however, a demonstrable fact that people from cultures all over the world have created beautiful works of architecture—indeed, even “traditional” architecture. The works of great architecture created by African peoples, Asian peoples, and Native American peoples are literally too numerous to name and there are countless non-European works of architecture that can easily compete with the very finest works of architecture produced by Europeans.

For instance, I don’t think it is possible to make a compelling argument that churches in Europe are somehow “objectively” more beautiful than Islamic mosques. The most impressive churches and mosques are in exactly the same league.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the iwan on the south side of the Jameh Mosque of Isfahan in Iran

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a portion of the interior of the Jameh Mosque of Isfahan

The same can be said about Hindu temples, some of which reveal an astounding level of planning and attention to detail.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of Virupaksha, a seventh-century CE Hindu temple in Bangalore in southern India

Exactly the same thing can be said about traditional Chinese architecture. Traditional Chinese buildings differ significantly from European buildings, but they are no less beautiful or impressive.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the exterior of the Temple of Heaven in Beijing

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the exterior of the Hall of Supreme Harmony in the Forbidden City in Beijing

If, for some off reason, you specifically only like churches, the Rock-Hewn Churches of Lalibela, which were constructed by Indigenous Ethiopian people in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries CE, are just as impressive as any churches in Europe.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the exterior of one of the Rock-Hewn Churches of Lalibela in Ethiopia

Indigenous peoples in the Americas likewise constructed monuments that are every bit as impressive as European monuments. Even if you just look up a few photographs of the Maya pyramids, this quickly becomes evident.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the Temple of Kukulcan, a Maya pyramid at Chichen Itza

The so-called “Western Traditionalist” doesn’t just deal with architecture, though; it also makes reactionary commentary on contemporary social issues. For instance, in a tweet issued on 2 December 2020, the so-called “Western Traditionalist” posted a photograph from I’m guessing around the 1950s showing a white middle-class suburban family posing in their Sunday dress clothes on their front lawn with the caption “How it started.”

In juxtaposition to this, the account also posted a cover from The New Yorker showing a woman who appears to be mixed race taking a Zoom meeting in her disheveled apartment while only dressed from the waist up. This second image is accompanied by the caption “How it’s going.”

In making this post, the account is not only implying that society has degraded since the 1950s, but also implicitly suggesting several putative reasons why. The fact that the family in the first image is all white and the woman in the second image appears to be mixed raced implies that the owner of the account believes that “race-mixing” is a cause of the supposed modern decline.

Likewise, the fact that the first image shows a husband and wife with two children and the second image shows a single woman who appears to be working for herself implies that the owner of the account believes that independent women who find jobs of their own instead of becoming housewives are another cause of the supposed modern decline.

ABOVE: Screenshot of a tweet from the so-called “Western Traditionalist” Twitter account

Ironically, the so-called “Western Traditionalist” seems to have completely overlooked the actual point of the cover from The New Yorker that he included in his post. By showing the woman dressed from the waist up while wearing only a pair of shorts from the waist down, the artist is clearly poking fun at how people try to portray themselves to others as “respectable” and only reveal their true selves when they are alone.

Thus, the second image is actually a fitting metaphor for the first. The first image doesn’t represent what any family has ever actually been like in person on a daily basis; instead, it represents an imaginary, idealized vision of how some white American families during a specific historical era wanted to portray themselves.

The people in the photograph may not even be a real family, but rather models posing for some promotional purpose. Even if they are a real family, the fact that they appear happy in the photograph is not evidence that their lives actually were happy. Finally, even if the people in that particular photograph really did have happy lives, that’s only because they represent an extremely small, privileged segment of the overall population at the time.

By analyzing this account’s tweets, I hope I have demonstrated how some white supremacists are using architecture to send coded messages about supposed white racial superiority. These are precisely the people to whom Donald Trump is trying to appeal through his executive order.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the owner of the so-called “Western Traditionalist” account is a really huge fan of Donald Trump. In a tweet issued on 21 December 2020, the so-called “Western Traditionalist” described Trump’s executive order regarding Neoclassical architecture as “holy based.”

ABOVE: Screenshot of a tweet from the so-called “Western Traditionalist” Twitter account praising President Trump’s executive order

The account’s followers are also really huge fans of Donald Trump. Various followers added replies to the account’s initial tweet in which they reacted with similar enthusiasm. For instance, one follower’s reply hails Trump’s executive order as “the start of the American Renaissance.”

ABOVE: Screenshot of tweets replying to the so-called “Western Traditionalist” Twitter account

Another follower responds with a solemn declaration that Trump’s executive order proves beyond all doubt that he is fundamentally “a good guy” and that he is fighting “for the future of the American soul.”

It’s clear that these people see Neoclassical architecture as more than just architecture. For them, it represents a vision of what kind of nation they think the United States is supposed to be: a nation that supports white supremacy.

ABOVE: Screenshot of a tweet replying to the so-called “Western Traditionalist” Twitter account

Why Neoclassical architecture specifically?

Now that we’ve gotten some impression of the general audience Trump is clearly trying to appeal to, I think it is important to consider the more specific political associations that Neoclassical architecture holds.

Neoclassical architecture specifically imitates older Greek and Roman styles of architecture. This is something white supremacists love about it, because they inaccurately perceive ancient Greece and Rome as “white civilizations.” In reality, as I discuss in great detail in this article I published in September 2020, the very notion of a “white race” is a modern social construct that never existed in the ancient world and it is therefore anachronistic to describe anyone who lived before the seventeenth century as “white” in the racial sense.

The ancient Greeks and Romans, of course, had a concept of white as a color, but they had no concept of it as any kind of racial category. If you asked an ancient Greek or Roman person whether they were “white,” it would make about as much sense to them as it would if you asked them whether they were “olive.”

Furthermore, ancient Greece and Rome were not homogenous societies and there were undoubtedly many people who lived in both these civilizations who were not what most Americans today would consider “white.” The Middle East and North Africa were every bit as central to the ancient Greek and Roman world as southern Europe was.

The Greeks were in close contact with the Near East and North Africa from the Mycenaean Period (lasted c. 1600 – c. 1100 BCE) onwards. There were Greek settlements in western Asia Minor at least as early as the eighth century BCE. During the Hellenistic Period (lasted c. 323 – c. 30 BCE), Greek kingdoms ruled much of the Middle East. Most of the people who lived in these kingdoms were probably not what most Americans would consider “white.”

At its height, the Roman Empire included all of North Africa and large parts of the Middle East. Most of the people who lived in the Roman Empire in ancient times were probably not what most Americans would consider “white.” People with ancestors from outside Europe were able to rise to the highest ranks of society. Many of them became writers, poets, philosophers, and intellectuals. Some even became emperors. In fact, every single emperor in the Severan Dynasty (lasted 193 – 235 CE) was of non-European ancestry.

Consequently, it should come as very little surprise that many of the most impressive works of ancient art and architecture influenced by Greek and Roman styles are actually in the Middle East and North Africa. All one has to do to see this is look at pictures of cities like Ephesos in Turkey, Petra in Jordan, Alexandria in Egypt, and Leptis Magna in Libya.

The whole notion that ancient Greek and Roman architecture somehow represents the supposed achievements of the so-called “white race” is demonstrably false. Nevertheless, the notion itself persists because white supremacists are desperate to claim whatever they can as evidence of racial superiority.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the façade of the Library of Kelsos at Ephesos, Turkey

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of Al-Khazneh in the city of Petra, Jordan

ABOVE: Photograph of the Roman theater at Kom el-Deka in the city of Alexandria, Egypt

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the colossal Arch of Septimius Severus in the city of Leptis Magna, Libya

A history of Neoclassical architecture and white supremacy in the United States

White supremacists don’t just like Neoclassical architecture because they associate it with ancient Greece and Rome, but also because white Neoclassical buildings have been inextricably associated with white supremacy in the United States since the very beginning.

Although Neoclassical architecture existed in the English colonies before the American Revolution, it was during the early decades after the revolution that Neoclassical buildings rose to prominence. American leaders at the time greatly admired the Roman Republic, seeing it through a distorted lens as an ideal society ruled by elite educated slave-owning white men. They wanted to portray the fledgling American republic as a revival of that society. Thus, they imitated the Roman Republic in everything, including in their architecture.

Over the course of the 1790s, the Executive Mansion (now known as the “White House”) and the Capitol were constructed in Washington D.C. Both buildings featured white marble columns and pediments, all constructed according to the classical architectural orders. Furthermore, both buildings were originally completely white on their exteriors, emphasizing the fact that they were intended as centers of power for the leaders of the supposed “white race.”

ABOVE: The original design for the United States Capitol from 1792

ABOVE: Earliest known photograph of the Executive Mansion (known today as the “White House”), taken in around 1846 by the photographer John Plumbe

Thomas Jefferson was perhaps the foremost proponent of Neoclassical architecture during the early decades of the American republic. He was also, not coincidentally, an avowed white supremacist and brutal enslaver of Black people for his entire life. (For more information about Jefferson’s brutal treatment of those he enslaved, you can read this article I published in September 2020.)

After Jefferson left public office in 1809, he devoted most of his remaining years to the founding of the University of Virginia. The university was chartered in 1819. Jefferson designed most of the original buildings for the campus himself. He wanted to associate his university as closely as possible with ancient Greece and Rome, so he designed all the buildings in the Neoclassical architectural style, giving them white columns, white porticos, and white pediments.

The buildings Thomas Jefferson designed for the University of Virginia became extremely influential as subsequent architects imitated them and drew inspiration from them. Thus, white columns, white porticos, and white pediments became staples of American civic architecture.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the Rotunda on the campus of the University of Virginia, a building in the Neoclassical style that was personally designed by Thomas Jefferson himself

White columns and porticos also became signature features of Southern plantation houses, where white masters forcibly held Black people as slaves and committed all sorts of unspeakable crimes against them, including forced labor, rape, and torture.

One of the most famous examples of Neoclassical architecture in the United States is the Millford Plantation House in South Carolina, which was constructed between 1839 and 1841 for the white supremacist and enslaver John L. Manning, who brutally enslaved nearly seven hundred Black people on his plantation. He enslaved more people than almost anyone else alive at the time, but yet his house is still revered as an architectural masterpiece.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the Millford Plantation House, where nearly seven hundred Black people were enslaved

After the Civil War, white supremacists continued to use white Neoclassical architecture to promote their noxious ideology. Neo-Confederates saw the Neoclassical style as ideal for advancing their agenda and, consequently, most Confederate monuments and memorials are constructed in some version of the Neoclassical style.

Northern white supremacists used white Neoclassical architecture to promote their agendas as well. The classicist Rebecca Futo Kennedy discusses in an article posted on her blog in December 2017 how the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, which probably did more to popularize Neoclassical architecture than any other single event in American history, was founded with the explicit purpose to promote white supremacy.

The centerpiece of the exposition was the so-called “White City,” a temporary city constructed entirely in the Neoclassical Beaux-Arts architectural style that was presented as an ideal utopia. All the buildings in the city were painted completely stark white and only white people were allowed to enter. The only exhibit in which people of color were allowed to participate was the Midway exhibit, which was designed to portray people from non-European cultures as “barbarous” and “savage.”

ABOVE: Photograph of the so-called “White City” at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, which was presented as an ideal utopia in which all the buildings—and all the people—were white

The exhibition of the “White City” at the Columbian Exposition ushered in the so-called “City Beautiful movement,” which sought to promote beautiful, stark white, Neoclassical buildings like those that had been exhibited in the “White City.”

Meanwhile, in 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt popularized the name “White House” for the Executive Mansion by putting it on all presidential stationary. Before the year was over, racist white people were already interpreting the name to mean that the executive mansion had been built for the purpose of white supremacy and that it was white because the people inside it were supposed to be white as well.

On 16 October 1901, President Roosevelt invited the Black American political activist Booker T. Washington to the White House. Racist white people all across the country—especially in the South—were shocked and horrified. An anonymous racist poet published an extremely obscene, racist poem titled “[n-word]s in the White House” in the Sedalia Sentinel, a Missouri newspaper. In this poem, the author promotes the view that the White House should be reserved exclusively for white people and mocks the very notion of Black people being present there.

Over the following years, other newspapers across the South reprinted the poem and it became well known among white Southerners. In 1929, First Lady Lou Hoover invited Jessie De Priest—a Black woman—to the White House. In response, Coleman Livingston Blease, a U.S. Senator from South Carolina, read the aforementioned poem aloud on the Senate floor.

ABOVE: Photograph of United States Senator Coleman Livingston Blease, who read an obscenely racist poem mocking the idea of Black people being present at the White House on the Senate floor in 1929

Ancient colors versus modern whiteness

Over the course of the early twentieth century, the number of white Neoclassical federal buildings in Washington D.C. proliferated. First came the Lincoln Memorial (constructed 1914 – 1922), then the Supreme Court Building (constructed 1932 – 1935) and the National Archives Building (constructed 1933 – 1935), then the Jefferson Memorial (constructed 1939 – 1943).

All of these buildings are, of course, stark white without any trace of color, emphasizing their connection to older white Neoclassical federal buildings and to the ideal of whiteness that white supremacists have promoted.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the front of the United States Supreme Court Building in Washington D.C.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the National Archives Building in Washington D.C.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington D.C.

The great irony here is that, while modern Neoclassical buildings may all be white, ancient Greek and Roman buildings were originally the exact opposite. All ancient Greek and Roman buildings were originally painted with bright colors and decorated with precious metals. Even the famous Parthenon on the Athenian Akropolis was once adorned with bright primary colors that most modern admirers of Neoclassical architecture would consider downright gaudy.

Indeed, even some ancient people seem to have thought the colors and decorations were a bit over the top. The Greek biographer and Middle Platonist philosopher Ploutarchos of Chaironeia (lived 46 – after c. 119 CE) claims in his Life of Perikles, chapter 12, that some people complained about the lavishness of Athenian monuments, saying, as translated by Bernadotte Perrin:

“And surely Hellas is insulted with a dire insult and manifestly subjected to tyranny when she sees that, with her own enforced contributions for the war, we are gilding and bedizening our city, which, for all the world like a wanton woman, adds to her wardrobe precious stones and costly statues and temples worth their millions.”

The only reason why ancient buildings appear white to us today is because they have fallen into disrepair over the years. The gold ornaments have all been stripped away and melted down, while the original pigments have worn away and deteriorated to the point where they are no longer visible. Thus, all that is left is the bare, crumbling marble. Nevertheless, we know that these buildings were originally painted because faint traces of the original pigments are still detectable.

ABOVE: Photograph from Midwest Studios of a model showing what the color scheme of Parthenon in Athens might have originally looked like

ABOVE: Modern reconstruction of what the Siphnian Treasury at Delphoi might have originally looked like when it was painted

ABOVE: Reconstruction from the Museo dell’Ara Pacis showing what the Ara Pacis in Rome might have originally looked like

Conclusion

I am personally a great admirer of Neoclassical architecture. I think that the White House, the Capitol, the Lincoln Memorial, the Supreme Court Building, and so forth are all very beautiful buildings and I certainly do not think that they should be torn down and rebuilt in a different architectural style or anything like that. Nonetheless, it is hard to escape the realization that, in the context of contemporary United States politics, stark white Neoclassical buildings are indelibly associated with white supremacist ideology.

I do, however, think that there may be a way to salvage Neoclassical architecture from its current white supremacist associations. I propose that we revive the authentic ancient tradition of painting buildings with bright colors and give all the white federal buildings in Washington D.C. a good paint job. In other words, I think that it’s time to make classical architecture colorful again.

Neoclassical architecture that is both tasteful and colorful can be done in the modern world. To see this, you only have to look at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which was completed in 1929 and incorporates polychrome elements, including one full-color pediment. Unfortunately, this particular pediment is still egregiously racist, since it represents the supposed triumph of so-called “western civilization.” I, however, think that it would be possible to use polychromy for the purpose of good.

Obviously, colorizing federal buildings will not solve the United States’ endemic problems with racism and bigotry. Nonetheless, it would send a powerful message that maybe—just maybe—things are starting to change for the better.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the polychrome pediment from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which was completed in 1928