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.
In his November 28, 2024 Wall Street Journal op-ed “Trump Can Restore Honor to American Art,” Johnny Burtka, president and CEO of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute wrote, “There are plenty of other candidates better suited to restore honor to federal arts and culture agencies [including the National Endowment for the Arts]. Justin Shubow, president of the National Civic Art Society, served on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts during Mr. Trump’s first term before becoming chairman in 2021. He played a critical role in the president’s classical-architecture initiative and influenced the designs of the Dwight Eisenhower and World War I Memorials… [He] would serve as [an] eloquent defender[] of Western civilization.”
On April 24, 2025, I delivered a lecture on “The City Beautiful Movement and Washington, D.C.” as part of the inaugural Teófilo Victoria Lecture Series, sponsored by the Florida chapter of the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art in collaboration with the Coral Gables Museum and National Civic Art Society. The précis of my talk, which took place at the aforementioned museum:
The 1901-1902 McMillan Plan for Washington, D.C. was the first achievement, and arguably the apogee, of the City Beautiful movement. Furthering and reinterpreting the original L’Enfant Plan for the capital, the McMillan Plan replaced the Victorian landscaping of the National Mall with the east-west axis and Monumental Core as we know them: stately classical buildings and memorials and public grounds. The Plan, the creation of the Senate Park Commission chaired by Senator James McMillan, paved the way for and envisioned the Lincoln Memorial, Union Station, the Federal Triangle, and generous public parks. The Plan continues to underpin planning in the District of Columbia to so some degree, though some have called for a McMillan 2.0 to broaden the vision for the next century. What might a neo-City Beautiful plan look like?
He is Donald Trump’s Mr. Architecture. Appointed chairman of the influential Commission of Fine Arts (CFA) during his first term, Justin Shubow is an anti-modernist, a fervent supporter of a return to an official style of federal architecture, along the lines of the Capitol, the Supreme Court, and the White House. In a famous 2020 executive order, for which Shubow was the penholder, Donald Trump imposed, at the end of 2020, a return to classicism for future public buildings. The text had caused consternation in the architectural community, who saw it as a reactionary offensive. The order was rescinded by Joe Biden upon his arrival in power, and Shubow was immediately removed from office. Trump’s return has relaunched the whole process. This time, the president has a free hand. What to expect? Justin Shubow answered questions from LePoint.
Le Point: Why do you hate Brutalist architecture, which has given its style to many government buildings and even the FBI headquarters?
Justin Shubow: Brutalism is based on the truth of matter, especially raw concrete. According to its theorists, it expresses the harsh reality of life. The Brutalists spoke of “rough poetry.” It’s an ethic, more than an aesthetic. It’s about building as if you were issuing a challenge. Brutalism isn’t just about buildings; it’s also a complete rejection of the past—not just past architecture, but past ways of life.
At their worst, Brutalist buildings instill a sense of fear. They overwhelm with their power. Some openly admire Brutalism for this sinister quality. Associated with state buildings, the Brutalist style symbolizes faceless bureaucracy. It also embodies the ethos of mass production, as Le Corbusier himself stated. Large Brutalist housing projects were built for the poor, but do the residents really like them? Do they have a positive influence on their lives? Why is Brutalist architecture so often used in dystopias like A Clockwork Orange?
Your critics believe that the Brutalist style also evokes a certain era, that of the welfare state, when the idea of governing for the common good dominated in Washington.
They support this style because they see good intentions in it. But buildings should be judged by their effects, and these buildings have a horrible effect on the real world. Three different housing secretaries, whether Republican or Democratic, all hate the building: even on the ninth floor, it feels like a cave. While some people associate Brutalist architecture with America’s heyday, many Americans associate it with socialism and the USSR.
In Washington, don’t you see a single Brutalist-style building that appeals to you?
Not one.
Not even the subway?
There’s debate: in my opinion, the Washington Metro [platform level] is modern in style, but not brutalist. The project is above all a direct reference to the projects of Étienne-Louis Boullée, not to say a rip-off.
You talk about your fight as one between the elites and the American people. That’s Trumpian style.
Architects—if they’re honest—will tell you that they don’t like this or that Brutalist building because it’s beautiful. Beauty isn’t the point. They admire it for other criteria, like power, use of materials, etc. But the average American doesn’t see it that way. They look first at the building’s aesthetics.
For me, yes, it’s a battle between the public and the architectural elites — there’s no other word for it. The intelligentsia feels threatened because it’s almost entirely modernist. Architects are afraid of losing huge contracts. There’s a lot of money at stake. They’re also worried about a takeover of culture.
Are they right to be worried?
Federal architecture is public; we’re not talking about a painting or a novel. When taxpayers’ money is being used, when a building embodies a society’s values, the preferences of the general public should prevail.
If you ask Americans, they clearly prefer classical architecture for our public buildings. In 2020, my organization [the National Civic Art Society] commissioned a Harris Poll: 72% of respondents prefer classical and traditional architecture for federal buildings and courthouses. This holds true across demographics and even political affiliations: 73% of Republicans and 70% of Democrats prefer classical. . . .
Trump has been obsessed with FBI headquarters for years: he has said he wants to raze it since at least 2018 and is now leading a purge within the agency.
Oh, the FBI headquarters will definitely be razed. It’s falling apart anyway. The government has done a cost estimate: it will be cheaper to demolish it and build a new building than to restore it. This problem affects all Brutalist buildings. They age poorly, and they are very expensive to maintain. For example, it would take $500 million to restore the James V. Forrestal Building, the Brutalist headquarters of the Department of Energy. And I’m talking about the bare minimum, not the cost of converting it into office space that meets current standards.
Define the classicism you claim to represent.
Classicism is not a style per se, but an architectural tradition that dates back to ancient Greece and Rome and is based on certain principles. Founding Fathers George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were amateur architects; Jefferson was even a true genius. He designed the Virginia State Capitol based on the Maison Carrée in Nîmes, strictly adhering to the lines of a Roman temple. He was also heavily influenced by Parisian architecture. Later, he and Washington played a role in the design of the United States Capitol. Jefferson called the Capitol “the first temple dedicated to the sovereignty of the people, based on Athenian taste, but for people who look far beyond Athenian destinies.” No one would say that the Capitol evokes Germany, Italy, or whatever. This building is quintessentially American.
What you are basically accused of is imposing an official style, of decreeing what is beautiful or not, of twisting the arm of architects. Until now, a 1962 Kennedy report recommended avoiding such an approach and leaving the initiative to them.
But modernism became the de facto official style starting in 1962. The author of the report you cite, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, would later say that he wanted all federal architecture to resemble [whatever the “Whiskey Trust” was buildings–a reference to the International Style Seagram building by Mies van der Rohe]. Until the 1990s, no federal building was built in the classical or traditional style. Since 1994, no more than 10% of buildings have been classically or traditionally inspired. There is a de facto modernist orthodoxy.
The 2020 Trump order simply required “special regard” to the classical and traditional model, that the projects be validated by the general public, that they be “beautiful,” “inspiring,” and that they ennoble the United States.
The 2020 decree had, however, “imposed” a style concerning future buildings in Washington DC?
In the case of the capital, yes. The idea is that Washington was designed on a classical model and is considered a classic city by the American people. We want to encourage this tradition.
As for the government imposing a style, that’s exactly what the Founding Fathers did. […] To claim that there can be no official style is to go against American history. Even under [Franklin Delano] Roosevelt, the government made classicism the official style, a style that produced magnificent and inspiring buildings, the results speak for themselves.
And then, around the world, there are numerous examples where leaders take charge of major projects. In France, for example, President Mitterrand demanded modern architecture for La Défense. Did he go too far?
The political traditions of our countries are still very different…
President Trump is only listening to the will of the people. But I want to tell modernists that it’s not the end of the world. It’s not as if there aren’t any private sector commissions. Do you have any idea how many commercial and residential buildings there are in the United States? There’s a lot of work to be done.
On the other hand, could it be that the modernists are receiving fewer federal commissions? That’s quite possible… Could it be that our revolution will influence American architecture as a whole? That’s my greatest dream… But we will be judged on the evidence.
The parallel seems obvious between the attacks on government buildings and the attacks on the civil servants who work there. This applies to the Department of Education, which Trump wants to dissolve. The Departments of Housing, Health, and so on.
The correlations are not surprising, given that many of the agencies Trump is attacking were created after World War II, when modernism was taking over federal architecture. What I do know is that civil servants prefer to work in beautiful historic buildings rather than banally modern ones. Beautiful buildings, which make them proud to be American.
The March 12, 2025 Washington Post featured an op-ed by Victoria Coates and me:
Here’s One Federal Building We Could — and Should — Scrap
The Forrestal Building’s form is impeding its function as home of the Energy Department.
By Victoria Coates and Justin Shubow
Victoria Coates, a vice president of the Heritage Foundation, served as senior policy adviser to the secretary of energy in 2020. Justin Shubow is president of the National Civic Art Society and former chairman of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts.
The General Services Administration is apparently rethinking its hastily withdrawn list of disposable federal buildings in Washington and around the country. But let’s hope they keep one structure firmly on any future list.
The massive James V. Forrestal Building, home of the Energy Department, is rightly a feature on “ugly architecture” tours of the nation’s capital. Buses full of tourists pull up in front of its hulking, stained exterior and gawk at the overpass that acts as a barrier between L’Enfant Plaza and the Smithsonian Castle, as well as the windowless concrete block addition that obscures the National Mall across the street.
The real problem with the building, though, goes well beyond architectural aesthetics. The Forrestal’s decrepit systems, labyrinthine footprint and dank, cavern-like interiors are physically preventing the Energy Department from playing a critical role in the emerging U.S. confrontation with China.
Like the department itself, the building has aged poorly. It requires $500 million in must-do repairs, and bringing it up to class A office space would be even more costly. Due to its state of disrepair and low occupancy, it costs $130,000 to maintain and operate for each actual building user. By contrast, commercial office space costs $10,000 per occupant.
Last month, the Public Buildings Reform Board, which was created to shrink the federal government’s real estate portfolio, indicated that the building was ripe for demolition. The National Civic Art Society and others have proposed that it would be best to use the site for two new, congressionally authorized Smithsonian museums rather than wasting taxpayer dollars on Forrestal.
The Energy Department was established by President Jimmy Carter in 1977 in response to the energy shocks of that decade, as turbulence in the Middle East exposed the vulnerability caused by U.S. reliance on energy imports to meet rapidly growing domestic demand. The department also encompassed the descendant of the World War II-era Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Although it is a necessary institution, the Energy Department has lacked a strategic vision and coherent purpose. Indeed, its own website refers to its nonnuclear elements as “a loosely knit amalgamation of energy-related programs scattered throughout the Federal government.”
The selection of the Forrestal Building as its home compounded this structural problem. Built during the 1960s as an extension of the Defense Department and named for the first secretary of defense, the complex was not intended to be a technology center. It was never sufficient to support the department’s needs, and subsidiary installations have been required as far afield as Germantown, Maryland.
A product of “urban renewal” that demolished a residential neighborhood, Forrestal is a Brutalist superblock building with an unrelentingly repetitive facade — the embodiment of faceless bureaucracy. Like the department itself, the building is a loose amalgamation of parts awkwardly connected by tunnels and overpasses. It certainly gives no indication that the Energy Department now has a compelling unified mission: to be the technological and resource arm of the burgeoning new cold war between China and the United States.
There is bipartisan recognition of this incongruity in Congress. In February 2020, for example, when President Donald Trump’s then-secretary of energy, Dan Brouillette, testified before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, Chairwoman Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) implored him to do something about the appearance of his building to reflect the remarkable energy renaissance in the United States, as well as the vital work that went on inside it. Kaptur instinctively understood that Forrestal’s form was impeding its function — to the detriment of U.S. national security.
The 21st-century Energy Department is a very different agency from what it was in 1977. In terms of energy resources, the United States has been transformed from an importing nation to a net exporter and is now one of the world’s three largest producers. China, the world’s largest importer, is now the energy-vulnerable party, a massive advantage that the United States needs to approach strategically.
In addition, the Manhattan Project has blossomed into a network of 17 national labs scattered across the country and housing various critical specialties. While it had been hoped that after the Cold War the labs could be incubators of scientific collaboration, even with nations such as Russia and China, it is clear that Moscow and Beijing have no interest in working for the betterment of humanity; their only aim is to filch intellectual property from these crown jewels of U.S. ingenuity.
The entire department requires a top-down reorganization to reflect its new and critical national security mission, which cannot be satisfactorily implemented in its current physical plant.
Forrestal was never a suitable home for the Energy Department, and it is now a material and unfixable barrier to maximizing the agency’s potential. Constructing a brand-new, purpose-built, cutting-edge and, yes, aesthetically pleasing campus along the recommendations of Trump’s 2020 executive order promoting beautiful federal civic architecture would enhance and support the department’s vital modern mission as effectively as the Forrestal Building undermines it.
On February 24, 2025, I appeared on Greg Kelly Reports on Newsmax TV to discuss Brutalism, the much-loathed mid-century architectural style of many federal government buildings in Washington, D.C., including the headquarters of the FBI, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Among other things, I mentioned that in 2020 President Donald Trump issued an Executive Order that effectively banned Brutalism.
The New York Times gave me some good quotes in a February 22, 2025 article on the politics of Brutalism under Trump:
The [Brutalist] buildings’ very association with government is sinister to people in Mr. Trump’s orbit, like Justin Shubow, who served on the Commission of Fine Arts during Mr. Trump’s first term. “Brutalism represents faceless bureaucracy,” he said. “It represents a kind of federal power in the worst possible way.”
Mr. Shubow, who helped draft the 2020 executive order targeting Brutalism, told The New York Times that classical architecture “is the architecture of American democracy. It’s what the founders consciously chose for the core buildings of government in the new nation.”
The F.B.I. building — which Mr. Shubow calls “the ministry of fear” — “needs to be torn down and replaced,” he said. “I think there is an incredible opportunity to build a new classical F.B.I. building at that site.” . . .
Mr. Shubow cast [the otherness of Brutalism] in a negative light, saying that the buildings “look extremely foreign” and “like something from the Soviet Union.” . . .
Brutalism’s detractors have presented the style’s unattractiveness as a fact. In 2018, Mr. Trump reportedly said of the F.B.I. building: “It’s one of the Brutalist-type buildings, you know, Brutalist architecture. Honestly, I think it’s one of the ugliest buildings in the city.” Mr. Shubow called Brutalism “aesthetic pollution,” a style celebrated by “architectural elites” but abhorred by “ordinary people.”
One of President Trump’s best appointments in his first term was Justin Shubow, who revitalized the semi-dormant U.S. Commission on Fine Arts. He provided alternatives to overblown and poorly conceived new monuments for the Washington Mall, and he made significant inroads toward changing the philosophy at the General Services Administration, which builds and renovates federal buildings.
Shubow’s advocacy for more traditional architecture, from classical to Art Deco, brought blistering criticism from defenders of brutalism; both the New York Times and National Public Radio grudgingly called him ‘one of modern architecture’s biggest critics.’ Despite nearly universal opposition to Shubow’s reforms from the nation’s leading architects, a 2020 Harris poll found that 72 percent of the public preferred traditional architecture in federal buildings.
Architecture is only one of the arts, but Shubow, who is reportedly under consideration by the Trump administration for the NEA Chair nomination, would be a compelling advocate for all of them. The battle lines for literature, music, theatre and the fine arts are essentially the same as they are for architecture.
On February 5, 2025, I discussed my vision for serving as chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, together with how Trump is beautifying civic architecture, on the Ben Shapiro Show.
I explained, “My vision comes from Dana Gioia, the masterful poet and translator who ran the NEA under George W. Bush. He said, ‘A great nation deserves great art.’ For too long, the NEA has not been producing great art, and I think this is one major reason that Republicans and conservatives have long called for defunding it. But I think that the highest art is that which is beautiful, profound, or moving, and we can foment a cultural renaissance in this country by using the NEA as a vehicle.”
Shapiro commented, “Well, Justin, good luck to you in the quest. If you do become the head of the NEA, that’d be wonderful. Obviously, President Trump’s vision for revitalizing America’s architecture and making the country beautiful again would be really nice because the fact is that so many of our federal buildings are, in fact, deliberately ugly and designed to intimidate. Justin does great work on this.”
President Donald Trump has made it clear that the aesthetics of government buildings will be a priority in his second presidency. His memorandum planted the flag: “Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture.” The memo directs the head of the General Services Administration (GSA), the agency that oversees federal buildings, to send “recommendations to advance the policy that Federal public buildings should be visually identifiable as civic buildings and respect regional, traditional, and classical architectural heritage,” and insists that those recommendations “consider appropriate revisions to the Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture.”
Revising the Guiding Principles would be a monumental development. Those principles, issued in 1962 in a White House report on government office space, replaced official classicism (which began with George Washington and Thomas Jefferson) with de facto official modernism, and abdicated authority from the GSA to the (modernist) architectural establishment. “Design must flow from the architectural profession to the Government,” the policy read, “and not vice versa.” By suggesting that these guidelines be changed, Trump is revealing his commitment to democracy in design.
The president’s memorandum has the same title as the executive order on government buildings that he issued at the end of his first term in office. That order revolutionized federal architecture, reorienting it from ugly and banal modernism to classical and traditional design. It required that, in planning the construction of federal buildings, special regard be given to classical and traditional styles across the country, defined broadly to include everything from Art Deco to Pueblo Revival. The order specified that in Washington, D.C.—a city defined by its classical federal buildings and monuments and intended by the Founding Fathers to echo ancient Greece and Rome—classicism was the “preferred and default” style. Trump’s directive also required that the general public—defined to exclude architects and critics—have a say in design decisions. No such requirement had existed at GSA, as documented in a recent Government Accountability Office report.
The order provoked a hysterical response from both the architectural establishment and cultural elites. The New York Times editorial board, for example, published an attack on contemporary classical architecture titled, “What’s So Great About Fake Roman Temples?” Architecture professors and critics accused the order of being Hitlerian or promoting white supremacy.
President Joe Biden predictably rescinded the directive almost immediately on taking office, but Trump’s memorandum from last week makes plain that a revamped executive order is on its way. The president is keeping the promise he made in 2023 at CPAC to “get rid of bad and ugly buildings and return to the magnificent classical style of Western Civilization,” and aligning himself with the 2024 GOP platform, which pledges that “Republicans will promote beauty in Public Architecture,” “build cherished symbols of our Nation,” and make Washington, D.C. the “Most Beautiful Capital City.”
With this memorandum and the coming executive order, the Trump administration is poised to Make America Beautiful Again. Such an agenda would reform not only public architecture but also cultural agencies, such as the National Endowment for the Arts—the country’s largest arts funder, with a $210 million annual budget—which for too long have failed to foster art that invokes American greatness. Trump should see the NEA, in particular, as a vehicle for ennobling the United States and boosting our national prestige.
The president has indicated that his beautification campaign will even include infrastructure. Sean Duffy, his nominee to serve as secretary of transportation, would “prioritize Excellence, Competence, Competitiveness and Beauty when rebuilding America’s highways, tunnels, bridges and airports” (emphasis mine). Just two days after the election, Trump had a cordial phone call with New York governor Kathy Hochul, agreeing with her that the dismal, dangerous Penn Station can be made “beautiful” again. My organization, the National Civic Art Society, has long called for the building of a new classical station as grand as the original Beaux Arts structure that was demolished in 1963. Could the stars be aligning?
Trump’s aesthetic agenda could have dramatic consequences. Prior to the election, Trump stated that he wants the FBI, now headquartered in a decaying Brutalist structure, to get a new building at its current site on Pennsylvania Avenue, which runs between the Capitol and White House. The new structure, he wrote on Truth Social, would be the “CENTERPIECE” of his “PLAN TO TOTALLY RENOVATE AND REBUILD OUR CAPITAL CITY INTO THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND SAFEST ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD.” Given the looming executive order’s likely requirement that all new federal buildings in Washington be classical, the capital will likely get an enormous and inspiring classical building—one that could symbolize a bold era in both architecture and the republic in which it stands.
Writing for Dezeen, the publication’s editor Tom Ravenscroft interviewed me at length in a January 29, 2025 piece on Trump’s directives re federal architecture:
[Shubow] described architects’ responses as “hysterical” and claimed that the American Institute of Architects (AIA) is “arguing in bad faith”.
“The modernist architects have to understand the world is not coming to an end,” said Shubow. “I mean, would it be so bad if there’s special regard for classical, traditional architecture?” . . .
Rather than setting a new direction for US civic architecture, Shubow argues that the executive order merely signals a return to classical styles after an interruption of modernism.
“We believe that traditional architecture is unparalleled in its beauty, its legibility and its appreciation by the common man,” he said. “Essentially, classical architecture is the architecture of American democracy, going back to the founding fathers.”
“What are the buildings you think of when you think of the US government?” he continued. “It’s the White House, the Capitol, the Supreme Court, the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial, the Federal Triangle. These are all classical buildings.” . . .
Shubow, who is reportedly being considered for the official position of chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, expects subsequent orders to mandate that a classical option for new federal buildings is put forward.
“I think the way this will work out when there’s a new executive order and perhaps other directives, is that there will be substantial public input with some kind of requirement that the public be presented with classical and traditional alternatives.”
On January 25, 2025, I was as one of three jurors for the Addison Mizner Awards, the highest prizes given out by the Florida chapter of the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art. I served alongside San Francisco-based interior designer Suzanne Tucker and Houston-based architect Russell Windham, chairman of the national ICAA board. There were 75 entries in the (blindly reviewed) competition. Categories included residential, commercial, multi-family, folly, and landscape architecture; renovations and additions; historic preservation; residential and commercial interior design; craftmanship; and more.
Convening in Palm Beach, we faced the difficult but good problem of having to choose winners from so many worthy submissions.
The award ceremony will take place April 26, 2025 at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables, Florida.
