{"id":80,"date":"2026-05-26T14:41:04","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T14:41:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=80"},"modified":"2026-05-26T14:41:04","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T14:41:04","slug":"how-trump-got-his-tacky-arch-approved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=80","title":{"rendered":"How Trump Got His Tacky Arch Approved"},"content":{"rendered":"<article>\n<p>One of the less remarked upon reverberations of Trump\u2019s disastrous rule of this country is that he has turned its architectural critics into exegetes of his sleazy plans for Washington, DC\u2019s built environment. Instead of writing about the burgeoning (and often life-affirming) shifts in today\u2019s architectural culture\u2014from adaptive reuse to beautiful, functional affordable housing\u2014we critics keep getting yanked back into the slopworld of ballrooms, arches, and faux gold leaf.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=78\">This Week in \u2018Nation\u2019 History: The United States of Surveillance, Through the Years<\/a><\/p>\n<p>It goes without saying that the proposed 250-foot-tall triumphal arch (one foot for every year the United States has existed!) is absurd and tacky. Modeled on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, it boasts gaudy gilded lettering and a 80-foot cake-topper statue\u2014Trump can\u2019t help but cheat, even on the height of his own precious arch. His McMansionized conception of what is monumental and \u201chistoric\u201d is, much like his culinary penchant for McDonald\u2019s itself, one of his most idiosyncratic qualities.<\/p>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<h5>America\u2019s True Fascist Architectural Legacy<\/h5>\n<p><span>April 15, 2026<\/span>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<h5>The Neoliberalism of Robert A.M. Stern<\/h5>\n<p><span>March 6, 2026<\/span>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<h5>Letters From the March 2026 Issue<\/h5>\n<p><span>February 10, 2026<\/span>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p>The motivations behind Trump\u2019s building frenzy are not exactly mysterious. \u201cWe\u2019re building a valuable piece of real estate right back here,\u201d he told attendees of an Easter lunch, gesturing to construction work on his infamous ballroom. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be amazing.\u201d Referring to the White House as \u201creal estate\u201d is a bit of parapraxis, letting slip that the executive branch, in more ways than one, is indeed for sale. He is also jonesing to build a kind of knock-off One World Trade Center (but this time, of course, with a hotel) as his presidential library (perfect for a man who probably hasn\u2019t read a book in 30 years), driving home that he is, above all, a developer at heart. His understanding of power derives from this fundamental belief that to control the land is to control the world.<\/p>\n<p>As a true son of the 1980s, he believes in spectacle over quality. Arches, ballrooms, even queues for the White House, as though it were the FastTrack lane at Disney World\u2014all of these reek of what architecture critic Michael Sorkin warned us about way back when: the \u201ctheme-parkification of the American built environment.\u201d Facing <em>his <\/em>impending 80s, Trump keeps spouting off erratically about his architectural plans. In a bizarre TruthSocial post, he bragged that the ballroom is going to have \u201cBomb Shelters, a State of the Art Hospital and Medical Facilities, Protective Partitioning, Top Secret Military Installations, Structures and Equipment, Protective, Missile Resistant Steel, Columns, Roofs, and Beams\u201d (I should hope so), plus \u201cMilitary Grade Venting, and Bullet, Ballistic and Blast-proof Glass.\u201d He clearly views these building projects\u2014these displays of undemocratic and militaristic might\u2014as crucial to his legacy.<\/p>\n<p>Those who realize what poor taste it\u2019s all in have little recourse, given the extent of Trump\u2019s capture of the rather complex and elaborate legislative framework that protects the historic built environment of the nation\u2019s capital. In fact, many of them only have themselves to blame. This, more than anything else, is what interests me about the situation: architecture as a form of power. It is a case study in how ideologically invested architectural movements can secure power for themselves\u2014and what can happen when the monkey\u2019s paw curls.<\/p>\n<p>Before Trump circumvented or infiltrated them, various DC agencies, each with its own internecine processes, governed how new buildings are erected in the heavily protected historic landscape that forms the iconic backdrop of American power. These agencies and their extensive regulations exist to prevent exactly what is happening now from happening. The hard-right-wing architectural advocacy group the National Civic Arts Society, which wants all that ugly modernism out of public spaces and nought but classical refinement in its place, reportedly played a big role in Trump\u2019s \u201cmake federal buildings beautiful again\u201d executive order. Their acolytes now staff the Commission of Fine Arts and the National Capital Planning Commission. Meanwhile, the Commemorative Works Act of 1986, which details a multistep process for authorizing and designing memorial works in DC (such an arch), mandates that all such work be approved by Congress. Oh, well!<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=75\">The Stupid Economy<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The White House has its own guidelines set by the Committee for the Preservation of the White House. The director of the National Park Service chairs this committee, which is staffed by federal officials and others selected by the president (many from the Commission of Fine Arts). Facing this total capture, the nation\u2019s usual architectural gatekeeping organizations (such as the American Institute of Architects) can only make statements condemning Trump\u2019s follies.<\/p>\n<p>At this point only the courts can step in. The National Trust for Historic Preservation has sued to stop the construction of the ballroom with some success; construction has been paused as of writing. Meanwhile, a group of Vietnam veterans is in the process of suing to stop the building of the arch out of concern that it obstructs the view to Arlington Cemetery. Never has a president been in a better position to alter the shape of the city from which he governs. Similarly, with perhaps the exception of the New Deal, never has a group of architects with an explicit ideology gotten so close to realizing their political vision.<\/p>\n<p>This capture comes with a price. As Trump waits out the pause on the ballroom construction, his toadies in the Commission of Fine Arts (including his now-fired ballroom architect, James McCreary) are pretending that their actual vision and opinions on architecture matter. <em>TheNew York Times<\/em>reported McCreary remarking of the statues on top of the arch, \u201cI wonder if you need those up there,\u201d and that \u201c[it would be] a better, more Washingtonian design\u201d without them. Similarly, about the proposed lions at the arch\u2019s base: \u201cWork on the lions and find replacements for them\u2026. As I said earlier, they\u2019re not of this continent.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>One can easily see how McCreary, with his overtly nativist views, ended up in the position he\u2019s in. However, the Faustian bargain the so-called neoclassical movement within architecture has made with Trump in order to secure access to basically unlimited control over what gets built in the nation\u2019s capital comes with the caveat that they are now beholden to someone bereft of taste. Not only that, they are and will forever be pariahs in their own field. Their complicity in the wanton destruction of DC will all but kill the nigh-50-year project of reviving neoclassicism in architecture. And for all their populist bloviating about speaking to the true aesthetic preferences of the American public, 58 percent of Americans do not approve of Trump\u2019s changes to the White House. Art of the deal indeed.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=73\">A Note From a Reader (and a \u2018Nation\u2019 Son)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Nation Magazine<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":79,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>How Trump Got His Tacky Arch Approved - Atlas Living Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=80\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How Trump Got His Tacky Arch Approved - 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