One of President Donald Trump’s final actions in his first administration was a last-ditch attempt to confront the impermanence of a four-year term by leaving his mark on something that could last much longer: federal architecture.
In a December 2020 executive order, Trump commanded new federal structures be built in the “classical architecture” style, defined in the order as derived from “Greek and Roman antiquity,” and including styles like Greek Revival and Beaux-Arts. The order at the time was controversial, and ex-President Joe Biden overturned it within his first weeks in office.
Trump apparently learned from his lateness and prioritized “Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again” this time around, as his administration has sought to emphasize the “Again” within the MAGA slogan. He issued on Jan. 20 a memo ordering the General Services Administration to advance architectural policy for federal buildings that promote “classical architectural heritage.” In late August, his official federal architecture EO regurgitated much of what was in the first-term order.
“President George Washington and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson consciously modeled the most important buildings in Washington, D.C., on the classical architecture of ancient Athens and Rome,” the 2025 executive order reads.
Since re-taking office, Trump has filled the Oval Office with gold-colored tchotchkes, began work on a $200 million ballroom, and paved over the Rose Garden with concrete. Last week, news broke that Trump is considering building a grand triumphal arch in Arlington to commemorate the nation’s 250th anniversary. And in accordance with a March EO to “reinstate … pre-existing monuments,” two D.C.-area Confederate statues that were taken down in 2023 are being restored. On Monday, Trump took a literal bulldozer to the government when crews began demolishing part of the White House’s East Wing to make room for the president’s ballroom extension.
By seeking to assert control over civic architecture, Trump is creating a physical testament to his destruction of democracy, Reinhold Martin, an architecture historian and Columbia University Professor, told TPM. It’s an aesthetic offshoot of Project 2025’s goal to gut public welfare and government services, Martin said.
“It’s a project of demolition, and that’s why I’m saying the laughable but also obviously very tragic and historically disastrous outcome of this would be a series of empty basically stage sets,” Martin said, “empty political monuments, buildings with nothing in them because they fired everybody.”
