President of the National Civic Art Society, a non-profit organization headquartered in Washington, D.C. that promotes the classical and humanistic tradition in public art and architecture. Eleventh Chairman of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, an independent federal agency comprising seven presidential appointees who are the aesthetic guardians of Washington.
As the U.S. Department of Transportation announced in October:
The Council will advise the Secretary on policy and design opportunities to build beautiful structures and restore the beauty of key transportation infrastructure, including highways, bridges, and transit hubs. . . . The Council will identify best practices, develop aesthetic performance metrics, and provide guidance on projects that enhance public spaces and reflect local character. . . .
The creation of this Council aligns with President Trump’s Executive Order (E.O.) 14344, Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again, which aims to update the policies guiding federal architecture design.
Shubow helped draft that Executive Order, issued in August 2025, which reoriented federal architecture from modernism to classical and traditional design. He also prompted and helped draft a similar Executive Order, Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture, issued by President Trump during his first term.
The Council’s first meeting, which Secretary Duffy will attend, will take place at USDOT on February 2nd from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM EST. The meeting will stream live online via Zoom, but members of the public must register in advance to watch. Register at https://usdot.zoomgov.com/webinar/register/WN_7gP6ZdlGSYeDFFvufdQOAA .
Shubow commented on his recent appointment, “It is a true honor to be appointed chairman of the Beautifying Transportation Infrastructure Council. From the Golden Gate Bridge to the Merritt Parkway, from Dulles Airport to Cincinnati Union Terminal, America has constructed some of the most aesthetically pleasing infrastructure in the world. Our country did it before, and we can do it again. Beauty in design must not be an afterthought, dismissed as an alleged luxury or anachronism in the name of pure functionalism. Yet for decades far too much of our built environment has been soulless and ugly. Harmony with the natural and historic landscape matters, as does urban revitalization. People want to live, work, and travel in lovable, inspiring places. I look forward to working with the Council in providing guidance on the aesthetics of design.”
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Founded in 2002, the National Civic Art Society is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that educates and empowers civic leaders in the promotion of public art and architecture worthy of our great Republic. We do this by advancing the classical tradition in architecture, urbanism, and their allied arts. Through our programs and initiatives we guide government agencies and officials; assist practitioners; and educate students and the general public in the preservation and creation of beautiful, dignified public buildings, monuments, and spaces.
On January 21, 2026, The Wall Street Journal today published an op-ed by me in which I call for the architecture of the new RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C. to be classical. The piece begins:
The largest private development in the District of Columbia’s history is under way: a new Robert F. Kennedy Stadium that will be home to the Commanders football team. At an estimated cost of $3.8 billion, it will replace the rusting, abandoned hulk that sits at the east end of East Capitol Street, fronting the Anacostia River. Given the stadium’s prime location, President Trump said the replacement is “going to be an architect’s dream.”
During a National Capital Planning Commission meeting last month, White House staff secretary Will Scharf said that he hopes the structure “incorporates architectural features in keeping with the capital more generally—classical, neoclassical elements that will align it with the capital that it will essentially overlook.”
I hope so too. The project offers a once-in-a-century opportunity for Washington to achieve its potential as a classical city inspired by Republican Rome—the intent of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. . . .
On December 13, 2025, National Review published an essay by me on Frank Gehry’s legacy, including the National Eisenhower Memorial.
The Complicated Legacy of Frank Gehry’s Work
The legendary architect, who died last week, was an artist of self-expression.
Frank Gehry, the most famous and lauded architect in America, died last week at the age of 96. He exemplified the “starchitect,” a heady mix of celebrity, brand-name design, and signature aesthetics meant to wow. With perhaps false modesty, he complained about being “geniused to death.”
Based in Los Angeles, where he was immersed in the hipster art scene, he was so well known that he played himself in a cameo on The Simpsons, designed concrete cufflinks for Tiffany & Co. and a silly hat for Lady Gaga, and was mentioned by Hillary Clinton in 2013 in a cryptic comment on the need for a new international order: “We need a new architecture for this new world, more Frank Gehry than formal Greek.”
It is wrong for traditionalists, whether in politics or architecture, to reflexively dismiss Gehry. Popularity ought not to breed contempt, and the domain of architecture is capacious enough to contain singular, yes, geniuses. Consider that, while overall critical, the conservative philosopher Roger Scruton had some positive things to say about the modernist Mies van der Rohe. The challenge, however, is to remember that exceptions like Gehry ought not to set the rule. The cult of genius that the architect triggered caused a plague of alien buildings that look like they landed from outer space: object buildings meant to shock, ignoring urban context and shirking the responsibility to build human settlements that serve the common good. None of this starchitecture, including Gehry’s, contributes to or harmonizes with the urban fabric.
Gehry said, “I try to rid myself and the other members of the firm, of the burden of the culture. . . . There are no rules, no right or wrong. I’m confused as to what’s ugly and what’s pretty.” In his hands, he could — at times — make this aesthetic anomie work (putting context aside). In the hands of mere mortals, failure is mostly inevitable. As the Romans would say, “Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi.” (“What is permissible for Jupiter is not permissible for an ox.”)
Although uneven in his output, at its best (as in the dynamic Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and billowing Walt Disney Concert Hall in L.A.), he was a magician conjuring radical new forms suggesting many simultaneous meanings: sails, fish, whales, flowers, artichokes, knife blades. His playful alchemy incorporated materials and techniques such as warped stainless-steel panels that could be constructed only with the help of aerospace computer technology. (He himself was a pilot and sailor.) His works could be exuberant and ethereal, achieving a feeling of lightness, as in his Fondation Louis Vuitton, despite their size. They also sometimes combine menace and joy, as in the “Fred and Ginger” Dancing House in Prague, where the external rebar in “Ginger’s” body is tortured by what appears to be crushing force from her dance partner pulling her waist toward him. At their worst (as in the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle), his buildings are jumbled mishmashes of colliding forms that look like the crumpled aluminum foil in parodies of his work.
To his credit, his Bilbao Guggenheim — an explosion of shimmering curved titanium tiles reminiscent of a whale the size of the Leviathan — was the first popular avant-garde building of its era. Over 2 million people visited it in its first two years. Seventy percent said they came to see the building rather than the art it contained. The building thus served a purpose other than being an economic boon to the rusting, post-industrial city. (Most other cities that tried to copy the so-called “Bilbao Effect” resulted in economic failure.) Like other contemporary architectural spectacles intended to serve as museums, the building is more moving and beautiful than the forgettable contemporary art within.
But the biggest criticism one can make of Gehry is that he was in the wrong line of work. He was a talented expressionist sculptor, not an architect. In his own words: “I said to myself, ‘Artists have trouble with scale in the city because the city is such a large scale. No one ever commissions artists to make sixty-story sculptures, and until one of them makes a sixty-story sculpture, their works will not stand beside the Empire State Building and mean anything.”
He repeatedly said he wished he had been an artist: “If I have a big envy in my life, it’s about painters. I wish I was a painter. . . . There’s the canvas, it’s on your easel, you got a brush and a palette of colors, and what do you do? What’s the first move? I love that dangerous place.” It seems that Gehry was turned astray from his true vocation by his college ceramics professor, who encouraged him to leave art for architecture. Despite de facto being a sculptor by profession, painting was always his biggest artistic influence.
Gehry is also to be commended for rejecting the architectural modernism in which he was schooled. It was his discovery of the great medieval churches of Europe that led to his conversion. His architecture school, he said, “had only a token class in architectural history and a token class in art history at USC at the time. Modernism was the mantra, and I bought into that. That’s how I was trained. When I went to Paris in 1960, I looked at things every weekend. That’s when I saw the great cathedrals — Notre Dame, Chartres, and others — and I thought, Holy sh**, I’ve been had.” His subsequent work represented not a return to history (other than the influence of the Baroque architect Borromini, with his convulsing geometry), but it demonstrated that modernism had come to a dead end.
Despite the modernist commandments, Gehry spurned any attempt to follow the purported Zeitgeist: It was his spirit he followed, not that of the times. He also rejected the dictum that “Form follows function” — the modernist idea that the form of a building is to be determined solely by its purpose. Gehry’s buildings look nothing like their program. In addition, instead of rigid modernist rectilinearity, his shapes went to the opposite extreme: non-Euclidean, swooping, curving, crushed, distorted. Abandoning modernist puritanism — restrained in color, form, and materials — he was licentious.
Some of his experiments in design were functional failures: The Disney Concert Hall burned passersby with 140-degree death rays, the MIT Stata Center leaked and cracked so badly that there was a large lawsuit that settled out of court, a building at Case Western Reserve University dropped perilous snow and ice on visitors, and the interior of his crumpled Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health disoriented the neurologically impaired patients. Dysfunction followed dysform. “Life is chaotic, dangerous, and surprising. Buildings should reflect that,” he said. At times, the danger was made literal.
Like many modern artists, Gehry was autobiographically driven, using his past and his (sometime tortured) psyche as his material. For instance, Gehry (né Goldberg) said his frequent use of fish forms derived from his memories of the live carp his grandmother would keep in the bathtub for preparation as gefilte fish. His self-renovated house — incorporating rebarbative cheap corrugated metal, chain link, and plywood — was inspired by his experience in his working-class grandfather’s hardware store.
Art and architecture was for Gehry a form of self-expression, which explains why he was such a poor choice for his only completed project in Washington, D.C.: the National Eisenhower Memorial. Gehry the self-portraitist agreed to take on the task of capturing the essence of someone else, someone far different. It was an odd pairing. The flamboyant Southern Californian was required to lionize a stolid Midwesterner who hated modern art. Just as bad, the purveyor of architectural chaos was working in a city hallmarked by classical order.
From their very first meeting, the organizers of the memorial said they wanted someone like Gehry to design the memorial. And lo and behold, years later he “won” the invitation-only competition that had only 44 entrants. A House Oversight investigation into the competition later found that the jury was unimpressed by the finalists, which included Gehry. In the jury’s words, “None of the visions expressed the whole essence of Eisenhower. The schemes as presented were mediocre for such an important memorial.” Nonetheless, a subsequent evaluation board would give Gehry the job for reasons that have never been made clear.
Perhaps most outrageous, the sole statue of Eisenhower, sited on the ground at the center of the main tapestry, depicted him as a life-size seven-year-old barefoot boy seated on a plank — inspired by Eisenhower’s first political speech after returning from World War II, in which he reminisced about “the dreams of a barefoot boy.” (Eisenhower would later admit his speech was hokum.) The design was topsy turvy its in scale and symbolism, and it intensely clashed with the heroic classical memorial tradition in the capital. The design, essentially with a void at its core, was attacked for being a monument to Gehry himself.
Congress held up all funding for four years, a bill advanced from committee that would have effectively killed the design, and the scheme was pilloried by the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts and National Capital Planning Commission. The New Yorkerreported that the design “managed to achieve something rare in Washington: in true bipartisan spirit, almost everyone hates it.”
Ultimately, Gehry was forced to remove the two smaller tapestries (leaving two free-standing cylinders like smokestacks) but threatened to strip his name from the memorial if the main tapestry was eliminated. He also added figurative statues to his design: wooden, hyper-literal tableaus of Eisenhower as president and Supreme Allied Commander. The barefoot boy was replaced by a statue of a teenage Eisenhower, with odd orangutan proportions, shunted off to a corner.
The impasse only came to an end when former Secretary of State James Baker brokered a backroom deal with the Eisenhower family. The Kansas landscape was replaced by a depiction of Normandy Beach in the present day, which satisfied the Eisenhowers who wanted more emphasis on the president’s accomplishments. They dropped their opposition, and therefore so did Congress. Gehry was not even a party to the compromise negotiations.
In the end, the memorial opened in 2020 at a cost of $145 million, with just $15 million from private sources — this despite the fact that the Eisenhower Commission initially said only 20 percent of the cost would be paid with tax dollars. Gehry, whose name is inscribed on the memorial, did not speak at the opening ceremony.
When you visit during the day, the image on the tapestry — a scribble scrabble sketch by Gehry himself—is not even apparent. At night, when the screen is illuminated, it is impossible to tell what is depicted other than abstract expressionism with Gehry’s “signature” hand-drawing on it.
Reviews of the memorial have not been kind. New York magazine’s Justin Davidson, despite being highly sympathetic to Gehry’s oeuvre, called the design “a wan anticlimax . . . a work of civic architecture that fails to quicken the patriotic pulse or add much to the landscape of memory in downtown D.C.” Edward Rothstein likewise panned the design in the Wall Street Journal: “Some objects are inflated beyond all significance; others are so diminished they seem afterthoughts.”
But the most important review is the saddest one: Few people ever visit the memorial, despite its prime location across the street from the National Mall and Air and Space Museum, which gets 3 million visitors a year.
In his otherwise idolizing biography of Gehry, Paul Goldberger, addressing the memorial fight, wrote that the architect “felt few people in the architecture community seemed willing to defend him. . . . Frank, anxious as ever about his reputation, did not consider the possibility that many of his peers were simply not enamored of the memorial design, and that it was their architectural judgment, not any lack of loyalty, that was preventing them from speaking out. For all his lifelong worry about what people thought of him, it did not occur to him that the architects he respected, and who he knew respected him, might have simply viewed this one as a miss, as one of those moments when Babe Ruth strikes out.”
All of this raises the question: Why did Gehry not pull out? Why fight Congress, the family, and public opinion? Why accept this compromise? In 1964, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s family denounced the selected design of the FDR memorial saying that they hated it, and the president would have hated it too. Not long after, the architects graciously resigned from their commission.
Can one attribute Gehry’s stubbornness to arrogance, to hubris? Or could it be that on that huge tapestry, he finally got what he wanted his entire professional life: a canvas with a painterly illustration in his own hand?
On September 3, 2025, I delivered a talk on “The Architect as Nation-Builder” at NatCon. Speaking of how public architecture can inspire civic virtue, I quoted Cass Gilbert, architect of the U.S. Supreme Court, on the underlying philosophy of his work: “It is an inspiration toward patriotism and good citizenship, it encourages just pride in the state, and is an education to on-coming generations to see these things, imponderable elements of life and character, set before the people for their enjoyment and betterment…. It is a symbol of the civilization, culture and ideals of our country.”
I noted, “It was Gilbert himself who was responsible for the phrase above the entrance to the Supreme Court: ‘Equal justice under law.’ Those words have become a famous tag line for the court, but it was the idea of the architect—a true nation-builder.”
On September 15, 2025, the Danish newspaper Politiken published a profile of me (original article in Danish here). English translation by the reporter:
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He Hates Brutalism – and Loves Trump’s Architecture Executive Order
Donald Trump’s executive order is, for Justin Shubow, a long-awaited and welcome break with the development that, since the 1960s, has set the course for federal construction in the United States.
By Anders Tornsø Jørgensen
Justin Shubow has rarely had more reason to celebrate.
For U.S. President Donald Trump has signed a executive order titled “Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again.” It states that future federal buildings—ranging from courthouses to government offices—should as a rule be constructed in “traditional or classical architecture.”
Modern architecture, such as brutalism and deconstructivism, has for far too long been playgrounds for “the architectural elite, but not for the American people whom the buildings are intended to serve,” the executive order declares. Should an architect nevertheless deviate, the president must be notified.
“We are at a decisive turning point in federal architecture. This marks the end of modernism’s hegemony,” says Justin Shubow from his home in a suburb of Washington, D.C.
He feels that his years-long struggle has finally borne fruit.
Since 2011, Shubow has led the organization National Civic Art Society, which fights for the return of classicism. On its website, modernism is dismissed as “parasitic architecture,” while both NPR and The New York Times have labeled Shubow “one of the fiercest critics of modern architecture”—a title he wears as a badge of honor.
“As Winston Churchill said: We shape our buildings, and thereafter they shape us. I believe our buildings influence our consciousness—they shape how we think, feel, and act. Classical architecture reminds us to think in centuries rather than only in the present.”
According to The New York Times, The Washington Post, and several international architecture professors interviewed by Politiken, Shubow played a central role in drafting Trump’s order and his organization includes architect James McCrery, who recently drew attention for his work on a new White House ballroom.
Shubow himself does not wish to comment on his involvement in the order.
The Fall from Grace
When the U.S. capital was established, the nation’s founders deliberately carved the republic’s ideals of democracy, civic virtue, and self-determination into marble and columns. That ambition lives on in Washington’s iconic buildings—from the White House and the Supreme Court to the Lincoln Memorial.
But 1962 marked, for Shubow, the beginning of an aesthetic decline, when new guidelines for federal architecture were introduced. They insisted that the state should not impose an official style.
“For far too long we have built sad, ugly, and unpopular buildings. President Trump recognizes that the classical tradition is timeless, and that it set the standard for 150 years,” says Shubow.
Alarm bells are ringing at the industry group The American Institute of Architects (AIA), which would prefer to keep the 1962 guidelines.
“AIA is deeply concerned about any change that removes community influence, imposes official federal style requirements, restricts artistic freedom, or adds new bureaucratic barriers to the construction of public buildings,” writes press chief Matt Tinder in an email to Politiken.
Shubow rejects the criticism, emphasizing that the decree preserves regional character and diversity.
“The word ‘traditional’ is defined broadly in the decree, and includes, for example, Pueblo Revival found in the American Southwest. It’s not a demand that there must be pediments and columns everywhere. Even the word ‘classical’ is defined broadly and encompasses both Beaux-Arts and Art Deco—not only neoclassicism,” he says.
“The most far-reaching requirements apply to Washington, D.C., where new federal buildings must be classical. But I don’t see any new projects on the way there.”
Popular Architecture
Shubow is neither an architect nor a designer—and he sees that as his strength.
“I was never brainwashed in architecture school,” as he puts it.
According to Shubow, this gives him a perspective on buildings closer to ordinary people’s than to professionals’. And that perspective is needed, he believes. For there is a fundamental divide: architects’ tastes on one side, the public’s preferences on the other.
As an example, he highlights a 2020 survey conducted by Harris Poll for the National Civic Art Society among more than 2,000 Americans, which showed that 72 percent preferred traditional over modern architecture for federal buildings.
But according to Cameron Logan, architectural historian at the University of Sydney in Australia, the survey says more about people’s immediate aesthetic preferences than about architecture in practice.
“Many will point to traditional buildings as the most beautiful,” he says.
“But the question is whether they would still choose them if it meant poorer environmental performance, worse functionality, or higher costs.”
For Shubow, however, aesthetics are decisive. He emphasizes that classical architecture is sustainable in itself because the buildings last longer and can still be fully functional.
“Just look at the Capitol—a 200-year-old building that still functions flawlessly,” he says.
The Strongman
According to Daniel Abramson, professor of architecture at Boston University, Trump’s interest in classical architecture is closely tied to his political project.
“It gives Trump a narrative of authority and tradition, and it fits into his overarching strategy of undermining the established elites, including in architecture,” he says.
Samuel Sadow, assistant professor in the Department of Art at American University in Washington, D.C., points out that classicism in itself is not inherently linked to authoritarian regimes. Architectural languages—whether classical or modernist—can equally be used by a dictator for propagandistic or repressive purposes.
That said, he sees Trump’s initiative as part of a familiar trend:
“A ‘national style’ in architecture has undoubtedly been a hallmark of authoritarian regimes in the past. Trump’s attempt to do the same—both in his first term and now again—fits quite naturally into his broader authoritarian initiatives and statements on free speech, gender and diversity, immigration, and law enforcement,” says Samuel Sadow.
Shubow rejects this.
According to him, architecture is not a political issue for most Americans. He recalls that Barack Obama, in 2008, accepted the Democratic presidential nomination in front of a classical Greek backdrop, without anyone crying authoritarianism.
“Granted, Trump is a deeply polarizing figure. But I think that when people see pictures of the buildings that have actually been constructed, they will realize that something has gone seriously wrong.”
Here are five buildings Justin Shubow dislikes (photos of each)
San Francisco Federal Building. Designed by Thom Mayne of Morphosis Architects, the San Francisco building was completed in 2007. “It looks like a spaceship about to kill you with laser beams,” Shubow says.
Orrin G. Hatch United States Courthouse. Designed by Thomas Phifer of Thomas Phifer & Partners, the Salt Lake City courthouse has, according to Shubow, earned the local nickname “Borg Cube,” after the villains in Star Trek.
J. Edgar Hoover Building. The FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., completed in 1975, is an example of Brutalist architecture. “A colossus I call the Ministry of Fear,” Shubow says.
Robert C. Weaver Federal Building. Completed in 1968, this Brutalist landmark houses the Department of Housing and Urban Development. According to Shubow, three different secretaries have described it as “ten basements stacked on top of each other.”
Alfonse M. D’Amato United States Courthouse. Designed by Richard Meier and opened in 2000, it is the third-largest federal courthouse in the United States. “Even The New York Times’ own architecture critic wrote that the building had an uncanny feel,” Shubow says.
On September 19, 2025, Fox News published an op-ed by Senator Jim Banks of Indiana and me:
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Architecture speaks volumes about how any culture sees the world and the values that guide it. When Americans think of the buildings that best reflect our values, we think of landmarks like the Capitol, the White House, the Supreme Court, and the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials.
All these structures have something in common: they’re beautiful and made of stone that radiates with light. There’s something about them that makes you look up, take notice and feel pride. More importantly, they reflect the kind of classic architecture that’s stood the test of time, going back to the traditions of ancient Greece and Rome.
George Washington and Thomas Jefferson put an emphasis on classical architecture when they helped design America’s capital. Jefferson hailed the U.S. Capitol building as “the first temple dedicated to the sovereignty of the people, embellishing with Athenian taste the course of a nation looking far beyond the range of Athenian destinies.” Washington praised the “grandeur, simplicity, and beauty” of the Capitol’s neoclassical design.
The Founders started a classical tradition that lasted nearly 150 years. It inspired the construction of beautiful buildings across America, such as Indianapolis’ Birch Bayh U.S. Courthouse – a beaux arts design completed in 1905. Built with Indiana limestone, it features Ionic columns and grand courtrooms.
The Tippecanoe County Courthouse in Lafayette, Indiana, is another great example. Completed in 1884, its three-tiered clock tower, sculptures and domed roof make this courthouse one of Indiana’s most beautiful public buildings.
But starting in the 1960s, our national government stopped prioritizing beautiful buildings. Today, fewer than 10% of new government buildings are in the classical or traditional mold. Ugly structures have emerged, including brutalist concrete hulks here in Washington like the FBI headquarters and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Three different HUD secretaries – one Republican and two Democrats – have compared their building to 10 floors of basement.
More recently, we’ve gotten new courthouses that resemble bizarre art projects, and in some cases blatantly undermine our country’s values. The architect of the Nancy Pelosi San Francisco Federal Building has openly said his work takes an “aggressive attitude” toward the public.
To overturn this trend, I (Sen. Banks) will soon introduce the Beautifying Federal Civic Architecture Act. It codifies President Donald Trump’s executive order “Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again.” My bill, like that order, demands that new federal buildings “uplift and beautify public spaces, inspire the human spirit, ennoble the United States, and command respect from the general public.”
My legislation doesn’t mandate any specific style for buildings across the country – it only requires a preference for classical and traditional architecture designs, which include everything from neoclassical to art deco to Romanesque to Pueblo revival.
My bill also requires federal agencies to gather substantial input from local communities when designs are being selected for federal buildings. At present, there is absolutely zero requirement for federal agencies to consider what kind of buildings the people they serve want. My legislation reverses that, ensuring the public has a say in the design of their government buildings.
Our country is still capable of building beautiful, dignified public architecture that encourages civic virtue. The Tuscaloosa Federal Building and Courthouse, which opened in 2012, stands as proof of that. Its classical design not only conveys strength and beauty; even more impressively, it was completed on time and under budget. It proves that beautiful designs do not have to come at the expense of fiscal responsibility.
The truth is that most Americans prefer classical architecture for their government buildings. A 2020 National Civic Art Society/Harris Poll survey of 2,000 U.S. adults found that 72% of Americans preferred traditional designs. Majorities across every demographic group favor this approach, including 70% of Democrats and 73% of Republicans.
Admittedly, some cultural elites will defend even the ugliest designs. Those same social activists complain that classicism reflects Western civilization and American values and history at the time of the founding. Guilty as charged.
Those critics are right but not in the way they believe. The design of our public buildings is not just about aesthetics and beauty. It is also a debate over Western values: who we are, who we wish to be as a nation. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who had a passion for architecture, was fond of quoting Thomas Jefferson for that very reason: “Design activity and political thought are indivisible.”
Political architecture is, by nature, a political choice. The Founders always intended for Washington, D.C., to be a classical city. That’s why we must pass my bill – to ensure our federal buildings continue to boldly reflect the values that make America the greatest nation on Earth.
Justin Shubow is president of the National Civic Art Society and former chairman of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts.
Republican Jim Banks represents Indiana in the U.S. Senate.
In “Don’t make federal architecture beautiful again” (Opinion, Life & Arts, September 6), Carlo Ratti argues that President Donald Trump is wrong to reorient federal architecture in a classical and traditional direction since what America needs are experimental, “sustainable” new buildings.
He alludes to the reasons the founding fathers embraced the classical tradition. However, Ratti fails to understand that the founders looked forwards while simultaneously looking backwards (as they did in political philosophy). For instance, Thomas Jefferson designed the Virginia Capitol, one of the most important American buildings of his time, as a close imitation of an ancient Roman temple, the Maison Carrée in Nîmes, in southern France. Focusing on technological innovation and the use of new materials, Ratti downplays the significance of aesthetics. One of Jefferson’s foremost reasons for choosing classical exemplars for the new nation was their beauty, which he said had the “approbation of thousands of years”.
In claiming that classical architecture is wrong for the modern era, Ratti also completely skips over the Beaux-Arts era in government buildings, which produced some of the most iconic, beloved structures in the country. The US Supreme Court, National Archives, and Jefferson Memorial — all completed in the 1930s and 1940s — are classical temples, not experimental designs.
Would it have been better that these had been constructed in the International Style, the avant-garde fashion of the time?
Aesthetics and symbolism particularly matter in government buildings since they physically embody the continuity of the nation’s values. I played a key role in promoting the ideas underlying Trump’s recent executive order, and have often said the common person is not ennobled or inspired by a “sustainable” building that looks like an alien spacecraft, such as the San Francisco federal building or Salt Lake City’s United States Courthouse.
And ironically, traditional architecture is in fact highly sustainable. Traditional buildings have longer life-cycles than modernist ones and require less energy to produce.
Moreover, architectural experimentation makes least sense in government designs, aesthetically or functionally. The US courthouse in Phoenix, Arizona, for example, which was completed in 2000, is precisely that — an “innovative” glass box in the desert that gets scorchingly hot inside.
Justin Shubow President, National Civic Art Society Former chairman of the US Commission of Fine Arts Washington, DC. US
In 2021, Justin Shubow, the president of the non-profit National Civic Art Society, approached a team of supporters with a starry-eyed vision: Renovate New York City’s Penn Station according to a grand neoclassical design. Shubow knew that the idea was a long shot. Generations of architects and urban planners had tried and failed to renovate the transit hub, whose maze of narrow corridors and dimly lit concourses regularly invites comparisons to a subterranean rats’ net.
But Shubow, a Columbia University-educated architectural critic with round-rimmed glasses and a carefully manicured goatee, thought it was important to try. During the first Trump administration, he had championed the revival of classical architecture as the chairman of the Commission of Fine Arts, and he wanted to bring the same aesthetic principles to bear on a new Penn Station — not just for the sake of the city’s harried commuters, but as a statement about the resurgent greatness of America in the Trump era.
“Classical architecture is the architecture of American democracy,” said Shubow, noting that the original Penn Station, with its imposing doric columns and soaring marble archways, was an exemplary model of classical design before it was demolished in 1963. “It is the architecture of civic virtue.
Shubow’s pitch found a receptive audience among his allies on the MAGA right. Tom Klingenstein, the Republican mega-donor and chair of the conservative think tank the Claremont Institute, quickly signed on as a chief financial backer. Over the next three years, a team led by the classical architect Alexandros Washburn spent hundreds of hours and over $3 million designing a plan — dubbed “Grand Penn” — to replace the existing station with a palatial new complex, complete with a glass-enclosed train hall, a 600,000-square-foot concourse, a public park and a new classical façade modeled on the pre-1963 station. On paper, the planers claim, the renovation would cost somewhere in the ballpark of $7.5 billion and could be completed by 2036.
But by the time the plan for Grand Penn plan was completed in late 2024, it was only lacking one thing: political muscle. Amid intractable fighting between the various city, state and federal authorities that claimed justification over station, Grand Penn remained little more than a blueprint on a shelf.
Then Donald Trump reentered the White House.
In April, Trump announced that his Department of Transportation would taking over a possible Penn Station renovation, wresting oversight of the project from embattled city and state authorities. The administration’s abrupt intervention was an extraordinary stroke of good luck for the team behind Grand Penn. Practically overnight, their plan for a classically inspired station went from a far-fetched conservative pipe dream to a real possibility. Although Trump’s Department of Transportation has not formally endorsed the plan, the plan’s architects have met with senior officials from DOT and the Federal Railroad Administration in recent months, and discussions between the two groups are ongoing, according to multiple people with knowledge of the discussions. (A spokesperson for DOT confirmed that FRA officials have met with the Grand Penn team, among other design firms.) In recent weeks, Trump has personally contacted Grand Penn’s backers to express interest in their design, said a person familiar with the situation who was granted anonymity to discuss private communications with the president.
“It seems that the stars might be aligning,” said Shubow, sounding a note of cautious optimism. . . .
Yet for the team behind the Grand Penn plan, the stakes of the battle go far beyond the station itself. In their eyes, a classical renovation of Penn Station could mark the first step in a broader aesthetic revolution — or, better yet, a counter-revolution — that would usher in a new wave of classical architecture befitting of Trump’s promised “golden age” in America. . . .
“Classical architecture is the philosophical manifestation of the theoretical founding of our regime,” said Klingenstein, a hedge-fund manager who donated over $10 million to Republican campaigns and causes in the latest election cycle. “The theory goes back to Rome and Greece. This is their — and, by adoption, our — architecture.”
Or, as Shubow has more succinctly put it, it’s time to “Make American Beautiful Again.” . . .
[D]uring his tenure in Washington, Trump has demonstrated at least some support for the architectural principles of ancient Athens and Rome. Toward the end of his first term in 2020, the president issued an executive order — supported by Shubow’s Commission of Fine Arts — directing the General Services Administration to defer to classical architectural aesthetics when designing new federal buildings. After the order was rescinded by the Biden administration, Trump issued a new presidential memo this past January reiterating the directive. . . .
“Building a fantastic new Penn Station with classical architecture would make a statement about American civilization in the same way that the rebuilding of Notre Dame in Paris said something about French civilization,” said Shubow, recalling Trump’s visit to the newly rebuilt gothic cathedral last December. “This project is so important that this could be one of the president’s biggest legacies.” . . .
In a statement, the [Trump] administration echoed Grand Penn’s grandiose ambitions: “Once-iconic gems of America’s infrastructure like New York’s Penn Station cannot continue to languish under incompetent leadership,” said White House spokesperson Kush Desai. “Restoring and revitalizing America’s infrastructure is a key priority for the Trump administration as part of our mandate to restore American Greatness.”
On May 16, 2025, European broadcaster ARTE interviewed me for a Reportage segment on “Washington vs. MAGA.” The discussion centered on the architecture of the nation’s capital and the civic ideals it expresses. I drew a sharp contrast between the city’s classical landmarks, such as the National Gallery of Art (a “modern” building completed in 1941), and the harsh, unpopular Brutalism of structures such as the Hirshhorn Museum and FBI Headquarters.
Tuscaloosa Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse, Completed 2012
I was recently selected by the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) to serve on the National Registry of Peer Professionals. GSA is the government agency that builds and owns federal buildings and U.S. courthouses. Participating in GSA’s Design Excellence Program, I join a group of experts in architecture, engineering, and construction who advise on the design and execution of federal building projects.
