In October 2020, the National Civic Art Society released the results of a survey, titled Americans’ Preferred Architecture for Federal Buildings, that found that nearly three-quarters of Americans (72%) – including majorities across political, racial/ethnic, gender, and socioeconomic lines – prefer traditional architecture for U.S. courthouses and federal office buildings. The survey of 2,000 U.S. adults was conducted online by the non-partisan polling firm The Harris Poll on behalf of National Civic Art Society. You can read the survey report HERE.

For press coverage of the survey, see the Bloomberg article “Classical or Modern Architecture? For Americans, It’s No Contest.”

At an October 2020 event sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute, National Civic Art Society president Justin Shubow called for an Executive Order that would re-orient federal architecture in a classical and traditional direction.

The National Civic Art Society’s Aims Regarding Federal Architecture

George Washington and Thomas Jefferson invented the architecture of American democracy when they chose the classical style for the new nation's capital and most important structures. Their decision consciously linked the city to the ideals of republican Rome and democratic Athens.

The Founders knew that the classical tradition is time-honored and timeless. In a letter to Pierre L’Enfant, the planner Washington, D.C., Jefferson expressed his wish for a capitol designed after “one of the models of antiquity, which have had the approbation of thousands of years.” The Founders launched a national idiom using the traditional vocabulary and grammar from the ancient classical world. Evolving over time, classicism set the precedent for federal government architecture for 150 years. The style shaped everything from humble post offices to important buildings such as the White House, Capitol Building, Second Bank of the United States (1824), Patent Office (1836), Pension Building (1887), New York Custom House (1907), U.S. Supreme Court (1935). It is, of course, the style of the beloved Lincoln Memorial and Jefferson Memorial. The classical style would remain the official federal style through the New Deal, as exemplified by the Federal Triangle in Washington and the Thurgood Marshall Courthouse in New York City.

In the mid-Twentieth Century, however, the government replaced official classicism with de facto official Modernism, a severe style imported from Europe that rejected traditional and national architecture in favor of industrial and machine-like forms and materials (particularly steel, glass, and reinforced concrete). During the “Modern Era,” federal design tended to take its direction from private-sector architecture, and many government buildings were and remain indistinguishable from commercial buildings. Government buildings did not and do not appear to be public buildings. In particular, courthouses did not look like courthouses. Embodying the worst aspects of bureaucracy, the buildings were and remain faceless, imposing, cold, and undistinguished. According to a 2003 government history of Modernist federal buildings, “both period and current analyses of federal buildings of the Modern Era have generally been negative.”[1] (For a visual atlas of federal buildings around the country, from which the decline is evident, click here.)

The National Civic Art Society aims to end the hegemony of Modernism in federal architecture by advancing the classical and humanistic tradition. That broad tradition encompasses both formal high style (such as the Supreme Court) and vernacular regional styles.

[1] GSA Office of the Chief Architect, Growth, Efficiency, and Modernism: GSA Buildings of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s (GSA, 2003), p.  86.

“Washington: The Classical City” is a documentary film by the National Civic Art Society that tells the story of how Washington, D.C. became an iconic classical city. Beginning with the Founding Fathers' classical vision for the nation's capital, the film delves into the history of the city's design, including the L'Enfant Plan, the construction of the U.S. Capitol, and the 1901 McMillan Plan that created the magnificent National Mall and Monumental Core as we know them. Unfortunately, after World War II, the hegemony of Modernism did great damage to the aesthetic integrity of the city as the federal government constructed Brutalist and other ugly buildings.

On January 14, 2019, the National Civic Art Society, along with the Ethics and Public Policy Center and Encounter Books, co-sponsored this panel discussion in celebration of Bruce Cole and his posthumously published book Art from the Swamp: How Washington Bureaucrats Squander Millions on Awful Art. For more information, click here.

On October 17, 2018, the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State and the National Civic Art Society hosted a talk by NCAS Research Fellow Catesby Leigh on "The Architecture of Bureaucracy." Leigh discussed the intellectual and aesthetic inspiration for bureaucratic buildings of the New Deal and later eras, and their stark contrast with the classical principles that influenced the architects of our Capitol, White House, and our republic’s other early buildings. The lecture took place at Historic Decatur House in Washington, D.C.

The Classical Plan of Washington, D.C.

"We Must Preserve the Founders' Classical Vision for Our Nation's Capital." Public Discourse.