Guess what? Classicism is the most popular architectural style in the United States, at least according to the National Civic Art Society, a nonprofit group that has tirelessly advocated for the style. (Its president, Justin Shubow, was appointed by President Trump to serve on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts and has supported a proposed mandate that all federal buildings be Classical). The Society commissioned a national poll of 2,000 Americans of various political affiliations, income levels, ages, and ethnicities, which found that nearly three-quarters of respondents preferred Classical federal buildings and courthouses. (Alas, the poll did not break out responses for registered architects, if in fact there were any.)
Participants in the survey, conducted by Harris Poll, were shown seven groupings of photos, with each pairing featuring one Neo-Classical and one Neo-Brutalist or Modernist building. In some cases, such as the choice between a commendable example of John Russell Pope’s work and Marcel Breuer's Hubert H. Humphrey Building in Washington, D.C., the results are not so surprising. Of course, the survey did not include some of the better federal Modernist buildings, such as the one Mack Scogin Merrill Elam designed in Austin. Nevertheless, I am not sure that even those buildings would have gotten the nod (though the margins would have been less extreme), or that a different methodology would have changed the results much.
There is nothing magical about the preference for Classicism, which has been giving shape to buildings for millennia. That default collection of columns, pediments, architraves, moldings, and compositional principles add a touch of class to any building, be it a bank or a courthouse, a suburban McMansion or a utility plant. Include those elements or compose your plan according to its system, and you have made any structure convey a message of importance and elegance, much in the way that we might opt for a suit and tie or an evening dress. No other style has been able to achieve the same level of success at communicating that sense of class. Sure, the Gothic and the Neo-Gothic, the Romanesque and Richardsonian Romanesque, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Neo-Miesian Modernism all had their day, but in the end, Classicism has endured in its various guises more successfully than any of them.
Not only that, but Classicism is the easiest way to hide a building’s faults. There is nothing like a colonnade in front to obscure the banality of what is behind. It is a lot cheaper to add moldings than to ensure edges meet cleanly and efficiently. Classicism is also an easy-to-remember way to sequence spaces and give them good rhythm, and you can do it all with straight angles. Actually, that is the only way you can do it, although you are allowed some apses, rotundas, and ovals for, say, the Oval Office.
Classicism may be easy to use as a designer and a builder, but it is also the style of the upper classes. The fact that the majority of respondents in the poll across all demographic groups preferred the Classical buildings says more about our dominant cultural values than it does about the universality of the style. If you can afford Classicism, or you can enter into its domain, you have arrived. The various modes of Modernism have never been able to achieve a similar reality.
But that also means that Classicism serves those in power and, more than just about any style we know, has racist associations, because of its long history with slaveholders and institutions of Black oppression. Our national and state capitols are supposed to represent democratic values, although their very Classicism can convey a message of white, male power. Like any language, however, Classicism has been used in many ways that were indifferent to any moral, ethical, or political message.
In short, Classicism remains the most efficient and most recognized way to make something that looks like important architecture. It can work very nicely if you want to give a new suburb the sense of tying into ancient traditions, or if you are building in a neighborhood filled with Neo-Classical buildings. Finally, it can provide a few arch references (sometimes literal ones) if you want to signal a place of importance, like a major entrance.
Usually, however, it is just a default manner of puffing up a building—the architectural equivalent to the carefully calibrated flavors and “mouth feel” that the food engineers rely on to create the much-loved McDonald's Big Macs. Not that the process is always democratic: If you can afford and appreciate the Chateaubriand version, there are plenty of Classicist architects who will use real wood and plaster, stone and copper, and endlessly tuned variations of Corinthian columns to produce something higher end. Unfortunately, budgets most everywhere are shrinking, so that even the cheap add-ons that hide flaws are being eliminated. That is the real reason why you don’t see a lot of Neo-Classical government buildings these days: Default surfaces produced semi-automatically using BIM are cheapest.
Which leads to some of the objections: Namely, that Classicism is engineered to give a quick message and can hide shoddy construction. That means it easily succumbs to mediocrity and is, by its very nature, not particularly sustainable as a design strategy. Classicism is the ultimate example of building on the land rather than with respect for it.
Still, as the survey shows, if you want to make a building that you can guarantee will be popular, give it that Neo-Classical sauce. If you have a client who wants the real thing, it’s hard to go wrong by giving them a modern version of the classics. And, yes, your building will tend to fit in better in urban situations, not only in contexts that already favor Classicism over Modernism, but also in a culture that instantly recognizes Classical buildings for what they are.
As for the best Classicism, consider how Carl Friedrich Schinkel, Edward Lutyens, and Pope used the style to explore fundamental and often radically new ideas about how our society should operate. That we have not for the last century produced anybody capable of doing that, at the same time as we have seen buildings in other styles or modes open up new realities, does not change the fact that it is still possible to make important Neo-Classical architecture.
Update: After I filed this post, President Trump finally signed a version of the executive order Shubow and his organization have been pushing for this past year. Though it does not mandate Classical architecture for federal buildings, which is what the National Civic Art Society had wanted, it does indicate that Classicism and “other traditional styles” are preferred and calls “modern architecture” (which I guess means anything without columns or pediments) “ugly and inconsistent.” The order makes an open-ended call for “beauty” and mirrors some of the National Civic Art Society’s assertions about how much the public loves Classical architecture.
The edict means very little, especially coming as it does during the lame duck period of a one-term President. To me it demonstrates a misguided opportunism on the part of Shubow and his associates. I believe the order will ultimately work against them, because it will even more clearly associate Classicism with deeply reactionary values, power politics, and racism. There certainly is a place for Classicism, but this–branding it as not just partisan, but the preferred style of a radical, populist avatar of the Republican Party—is not the way to highlight its potential and set the stage for civic discourse and shared values.
Let us hope that the new presidential administration, one chosen by a majority of Americans, will support quality in architecture, no matter its style. We can even dream of an open debate in which we pursue the question of what makes something “beautiful” and how we can find forms that are not only loved by us all, but that are truly sustainable, open, and contribute to the act of building a better civil society.
Aaron Betsky is a regularly featured columnist whose views and conclusions are not necessarily those of ARCHITECT magazine nor of the American Institute of Architects.
