On December 21, 2020, President Trump issued an Executive Order on Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture. In it, he wrote about the importance of architecture and complained about the modern Brutalist design of so many federal buildings. He called for more architecture with classical designs, which he defined as:

the architectural tradition derived from the forms, principles, and vocabulary of the architecture of Greek and Roman antiquity, and as later developed and expanded upon by such Renaissance architects as Alberti, Brunelleschi, Michelangelo, and Palladio; such Enlightenment masters as Robert Adam, John Soane, and Christopher Wren; such 19th-century architects as Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Robert Mills, and Thomas U. Walter; and such 20th-century practitioners as Julian Abele, Daniel Burnham, Charles F. McKim, John Russell Pope, Julia Morgan, and the firm of Delano and Aldrich. Classical architecture encompasses such styles as Neoclassical, Georgian, Federal, Greek Revival, Beaux-Arts, and Art Deco.

While I’m not sure how Marie Beale would have felt about Art Deco, she certainly would have approved of the President’s order. She once wrote that “All of my life the classic spirit in all the arts has been my ideal.” Another time, after hearing a symphony perform “futuristic music”, she dubbed it “bolshevkik”, as well as “painful and hideous”. And she wrote that she was sure that she “shall die a classicist”.

It was on architecture where she seemed to have the strongest feelings. She was a believer in historic preservation, especially of Decatur House, which was built in the Federal style. In a letter she sent in 1945 to the Secretary of the Navy to make the case for the preservation of her house, she bemoaned the tearing down of old buildings in Washington and worried about it “becoming a dreary waste of monotonous government buildings which require nothing but money.” (see below for the full letter).

So, whatever else she might have thought about the politics of our day, it is safe to say that she would have strongly approved of this executive order.