While President Donald Trump has been changing America’s power abroad, he is also working to impose his will on the nation’s capital.
Trump’s urban moves in DC’s built environment have raised eyebrows and it sparked a lawsuit.
The DC transformation is already underway, from the violence of the East Wing of the White House to make room for the theater, for a changes of the White House Rose Garden, for scheduled to be closed for two years of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for renovations.
And more changes could be coming soon: a 250-foot arch near Arlington National Cemetery, a plan for color on the outside of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, and a sculpture park near the National Mall.
Past presidents have added or modified parts of Washington DC’s historic base. But Trump’s disregard for design review processes has angered many preservationists.
Today, It’s Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram discussed these changes with The Washington Post’s longtime architecture critic, Philip Kennicott, who wrote a column about the threat Trump poses to DC’s architectural pride.
The following is part of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s a lot more in the full podcast, so take a listen Today, It’s Explained wherever you find podcasts, incl Apple Podcasts, Pandoraand Spotify.
Philip, you recently published a column about Donald Trump’s transformation of Washington, DC in which you make a very bold argument. You say that Trump is the biggest threat to the city’s architecture and design since the city was burned by the British in the War of 1812. Tell us how you justify that argument.
That sounds like hyperbole perhaps, but, in fact, he turns out to be a surprisingly influential force in terms of city design. In the War of 1812, the British went through and burned the White House and burned the Capitol, and they must be rebuilt.
Donald Trump has torn down the East Wing of the White House, and he’s making big changes, big additions. He has given the Rose Garden to the White House. He wants to build a new victory arch at Arlington Cemetery. He talks about a National Heroes Park that would truly transform the sylvan landscape along the Potomac River.
It goes on and on. And even more important than that change is the fact that he wants to change the way Washington manages change. He actually wants to force this through personal discretion rather than through the lengthy design review process, which has been absolutely essential to making Washington the city we know today.
Important to the point you make here is that DC is not New York. It is not a city that was built slowly over time, that continued and changed with the times. The interest in Washington, DC sets it aside.
Yes, it starts as a planned city. Very few American cities start with a plan.
An architect named Pierre L’Enfant created what was called the L’Enfant Plan, and that was to take the regular city grid of streets, those that run north-south, and east-west of the big boxes that were generally neighborhoods, for business, for everyday things of life, and then put on them these highways that connect important civic areas. Maybe there’s a statue there, maybe in the Capitol or the White House. And these form the greatest architecture.
In a way, the view of these roads stands for the desire of the country – a sense of far-sightedness. And Washington has done a lot over the years to preserve that. Among the most basic things are: We did not build skyscrapers. We have set the sky very low. And one of Trump’s changes, which is this massive 250-foot memorial arch, would actually be one of the tallest buildings in Washington and would fundamentally change the landscape.
(The public) voted for this president twice. His hotels in New York are tourist attractions. People all over the world go to his golf courses. If he puts up an arch on the Virginia bank in front of Arlington National Cemetery behind the Lincoln Memorial, is there a chance that people will end up loving it the way they did the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower, even though they may not have been a clear success when they were originally built?
Yes, that is a very interesting question. I struggle with that all the time. One of the things that bothers me is that the impulses and instincts that Americans had about symbols of empire – we were allergic to those things. We were very surprised at the idea of the president being in any way royal or like a king.
Now, I think there is little understanding of the relationship between ethics and politics on the one hand and aesthetics and architecture on the other. And so, in a way, the story I’m writing is an attempt to make Americans aware of why, in what sense, the hidden history and the hidden beauty in Washington is so important and so important. You might not get that just by visiting a double-decker city bus, but it’s there. And it was very important to the people who made Washington the city that is so beloved today.
If he has his way, does he also suggest to future presidents that you can have your way with this city, with its monuments, with its environment and then create some kind of aesthetic saw for the nation’s capital?
Oh, I think it’s more than just suggestive. I think he is laying out the road map.
I mentioned at the beginning of our conversation that one of the real victims in all of this is the idea of design review. There are these groups in Washington, including one that goes back to 1910, that have the ability to come and look at plans, and often they have professional architects, professional designers, professional landscape artists, and they improve things.
Trump has staffed the committees with his people, including his 26-year-old personal assistant, who, as far as I can tell, has no expertise in any of these questions. And basically it’s kind of a rubber stamp on these things. So that’s a road map for any incoming president.
If you want an unfortunate example, you can think back to the days of ancient Rome when new emperors would come, and if they really didn’t like their predecessor, they wouldn’t necessarily just tear down the triumphal arch that their predecessor had put up. They may even take statues and replace their heads with the heads of their own symbols, a form of frequently modifying the symbolic landscape of Rome to represent a person in power. And you can say, “Well, that’s just politics,” but that creates an environment that doesn’t have the historical appeal and the temporal stability that you would want and that we’ve had in Washington for a very long time.
