{"id":42231,"date":"2026-04-10T07:15:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T14:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=42231"},"modified":"2026-04-10T07:42:33","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T14:42:33","slug":"in-his-efforts-to-remake-federal-architecture-trump-repudiates-the-republican-ideals-that-have-long-informed-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/in-his-efforts-to-remake-federal-architecture-trump-repudiates-the-republican-ideals-that-have-long-informed-it\/","title":{"rendered":"In his efforts to remake federal architecture, Trump repudiates the \u2018republican ideals\u2019 that have long informed it"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Kevin D. Murphy<\/a>, Vanderbilt University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sand was thrown in the gears of President Donald Trump\u2019s grand White House ballroom plans on March 31, 2026, when U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon ordered a pause on construction<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The president, the judge wrote, was the \u201csteward\u201d of the residence, not its \u201cowner.\u201d In response, the Justice Department filed an emergency motion<\/a>, asking that construction be allowed to resume due to security risks caused by the project being in a state of limbo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Presidents of the United States, unlike other<\/a> world leaders<\/a>, have not typically sought to impress their own architectural tastes on national monuments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this regard, Trump is the exception. His approach to remaking federal architecture has mirrored his approach to university funding<\/a> and immigration enforcement<\/a>: move fast, break things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Trump\u2019s imposition of his aesthetic preferences doesn\u2019t just threaten to erase chapters in the story of the nation\u2019s federal architecture. It also risks undoing the legacies of presidential wives, influential designers and the egalitarian ideals that many of these buildings embody.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gaudy grandeur<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Since his second term began in January 2025, Trump has paved over<\/a> the storied White House Rose Garden \u2013 established by first lady Ellen Wilson in 1913 and redesigned by renowned horticulturalist Bunny Mellon<\/a> in 1962 \u2013 complaining that ladies\u2019 high-heeled shoes sank into the ground. The art deco bathroom off the Lincoln Bedroom now reflects Trump\u2019s penchant for polished marble<\/a>. And gold-colored decorative elements<\/a> have been affixed to the simple woodwork throughout the White House, with some of the ornamentation brought from Mar-a-Lago, Trump\u2019s Florida estate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most notably, the East Wing, which housed the offices of the first lady and her staff, was flattened in fall 2025 to make way for a grand ballroom projected to cost some US$400 million. The building, if completed as planned, will dwarf the historic White House<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ballroom also reflects Trump\u2019s taste for grandiosity and opulence \u2013 the same aesthetic that\u2019s reflected in the 250-foot \u201cIndependence Arch<\/a>\u201d that Trump has proposed for Washington.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump has repeatedly complained that public buildings in Washington lack grandeur. He was even quoted by Golf Magazine<\/a> in 2017 as having described the White House as a \u201creal dump,\u201d although he later denied it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet many of the structures he has demolished or has sought to revise embody, in their form and decoration, certain republican ideals, such as government by the people, civic virtue and opposition to concentrated power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Buildings that embody egalitarianism<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Trump has added accents to the White House to mimic the imposing homes of British and European monarchs. But the residence\u2019s original \u201crepublican simplicity<\/a>\u201d \u2013 a concept attributed to Thomas Jefferson \u2013 actually had a purpose: It signaled the egalitarian outlook of the founders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1792, when Jefferson was George Washington\u2019s secretary of state, he anonymously entered the competition to design a new presidential home. His submission<\/a>, which didn\u2019t end up winning, was inspired by Renaissance architecture like Andrea Palladio\u2019s Villa Rotonda<\/a>. Completed around 1570 in northern Italy, the Villa Rotonda features symmetrical facades and harmonious proportions that have been equated with Renaissance humanism and rationalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elsewhere, Jefferson advocated for modeling the young nation\u2019s government architecture on the classical tradition, due to its associations with ancient Greek and Roman democracy. This often meant using classical design principles<\/a> like restraint, order and geometric harmony, and adapting them by either simplifying the elements or using locally available materials instead of the expensive marble and other stones favored by the ancients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A repudiation of \u2018republican simplicity\u2019<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In August 2025, Trump signed an executive order, Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again<\/a>, directing that this same classical style inform the design of all future federal buildings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet Trump\u2019s own vision for the White House design doesn\u2019t align with this directive. For one, the sheer enormity<\/a> of the proposed ballroom transgresses the foundational belief in classical restraint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The columns that support the massive south portico \u2013 which in an earlier iteration was reached by a grand staircase that didn\u2019t lead to an entrance \u2013 have Corinthian capitals<\/a>, the most ornate type of decorative top for a column. In contrast, Ionic capitals<\/a>, which are more restrained, currently grace the columns at the entrance of the White House. One of Trump\u2019s appointees, however, wants to swap these out<\/a> in favor of Corinthian capitals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the temple-style portico<\/a> on the east fa\u00e7ade of the planned ballroom is awkwardly shifted to the far north end, rather than being centered as the classical tradition would dictate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Glossing over history<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This is not to say that classical principles have never run up against contemporary design trends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1888, architect Alfred B. Mullett<\/a> completed the State, War and Navy Building, now known as the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Mullet had been inspired by Boston\u2019s Old City Hall<\/a>, which had been completed in 1865 and was itself inspired by the government architecture of the French Second Empire<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump has said that he finds the Eisenhower building\u2019s gray granite fa\u00e7ade dreary, and that he\u2019d like to paint it white<\/a>. Yet the material itself is a crucial element, tying the structure to the \u201cBoston Granite Style.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the office building is painted white \u2013 in a process that would degrade the granite<\/a> \u2013 a visual key to understanding its architectural and political history would be lost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Architectural historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock argued how forward-looking the building<\/a> was for its time, and showed how how it mirrored the first skyscrapers erected in New York City: Richard Morris Hunt\u2019s Tribune Building<\/a> and the Western Union Building<\/a> designed by Hunt\u2019s pupil George B. Post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For these reasons, preservationists have sued Trump<\/a> to try to prevent these alterations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Stately,
President Donald Trump wants to paint the Eisenhower Executive Office Building white. Celal G\u00fcne\/Anadolu via Getty Images<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Design that\u2019s bottom up, not top down<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I think it\u2019s also important to note that in the original design and construction of many of the buildings Trump disparages, women played outsized roles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I note in my 2025 book, \u201cWomen Architects at Work: Making American Modernism<\/a>,\u201d which I co-authored with Mary Anne Hunting<\/a>, the contributions of women in architecture and design have often been overlooked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Trump administration\u2019s projects in and around Washington will only further obscure the women who shaped the federal buildings and landscapes of the capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the Rose Garden reflected the efforts of Bunny Mellon and Jacqueline Kennedy, the East Wing came under the watchful eye of Edith Roosevelt, the wife of President Theodore Roosevelt. Edith worked hand-in-hand with famed classicist architect Charles Follen McKim<\/a> on its redesign as the primary entrance, in 1902. And had it not been for the public fundraising efforts of Jacqueline Kennedy<\/a>, the capital may never have had a performing arts venue of national significance, the Kennedy Center for the Arts. In early 2026, the Trump administration announced that the center would close for two years<\/a> to undergo an estimated US$200 million renovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While all buildings are living organisms that are frequently adapted to changing functional requirements, they are also the repositories of national memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1961, a young Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who, as a U.S. senator from New York, would later go on to advocate for historic preservation, penned \u201cGuiding Principles for Federal Architecture<\/a>\u201d on behalf of an ad hoc government committee on office space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe development of an official style must be avoided,\u201d he wrote. \u201cDesign must flow from the architectural profession to the Government, and not vice versa.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Judge Leon made clear in his ballroom ruling, no government officials \u2013 not even presidents \u2013 \u201cown\u201d federal architecture. The American people do. And it\u2019s up to their representatives in Congress to decide whether to destroy or renovate it, bearing in mind that it\u2019s an inextricable part of the country\u2019s history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article was written with the collaboration of Mary Anne Hunting, Ph.D., an independent scholar in New York City.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kevin D. Murphy<\/a>, Professor and Chair of History of Art, Vanderbilt University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kevin D. Murphy, Vanderbilt University Sand was thrown in the gears of President Donald Trump\u2019s grand White House ballroom plans on March 31, 2026, when U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon ordered a pause on construction. The president, the judge wrote, was the \u201csteward\u201d of the residence, not its \u201cowner.\u201d In response, the Justice Department […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":42232,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8025,46,295,10,296,36,4],"tags":[190,17645,17643,479,17644,17429,885,891,886,860,12280,16004,3617,714,9888,99],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42231"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42231"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42233,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42231\/revisions\/42233"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}