SEN JIM BANKS: Trump’s new Triumphal Arch is a monument to American greatness

The Commission of Fine Arts has officially approved President Trump’s plans to build a Triumphal Arch on the outskirts of Washington, over the Memorial Bridge and across from the Lincoln Memorial. 

The blueprint, produced by the Department of Interior, envisions a Triumphal Arch that stands 250 feet tall, adorned with eagles, and crowned with a statue of lady liberty. It will be a monument to American exceptionalism, and a tribute to America’s 250th birthday this July. The Arch is classic President Trump: It says that America is not ashamed of its greatness, and that we are willing to build things worthy of our great nation. 

It also is a hopeful sign of the Trump administration’s continued commitment to reviving classical architecture. Last summer, President Trump signed an executive order, “Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again,” that directs the General Services Administration to ensure new federal buildings “uplift and beautify public spaces” and “ennoble the United States”. The arch is the latest expression yet of the movement to reclaim beauty as a civic value, and I am proud to stand behind it.

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Elites who sneer at the arch would have you believe that grand civic monuments are somehow gaudy, or, even less believably, fascistic. The New Yorker, among the snobbiest magazines in circulation, recently accused President Trump’s arch of belonging to an “Architecture of Autocracy.”

But most Americans instinctively understand that beauty in public spaces isn’t authoritarian; public beauty is a gift, and a crucial part of our republican inheritance and tradition. The Triumphal Arch’s design complements the classical, democratic architecture of the Capitol Building, the Washington Monument, and the Jefferson Memorial. 

Contrarily, the recent, modernist architecture in Washington, D.C. that the Trump administration aims to supplant, is ugly, authoritarian and sticks out like a sore thumb. The J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building is a brutalist disaster. The Hubert Humphrey Building looks like something out of a Soviet-era nightmare. Dr. Ben Carson famously called the HUD building “ten floors of basement.” These hideous buildings in the heart of our nation’s capital lower expectations about our government and make citizens feel small.

The Triumphal Arch reverses that message entirely. It says that America is great and we’re not embarrassed to show it.

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I look forward to seeing the construction of the Triumphal Arch over the next several months, and I am hopeful it will be one of many projects, along with the East Wing Ballroom, that restore beauty to federal architecture. Earlier this year, I introduced the Beautifying Federal Civic Architecture Act, to codify into law what President Trump has already established by executive order. My bill will ensure that classical buildings like the Triumphal Arch are built in Washington, DC and around the country for many years to come. 

Because beautiful architecture shouldn’t be reserved for Washington residents, and in the past, it hasn’t been. I grew up in a trailer park in Columbia City, Indiana. My neighborhood didn’t look like the National Mall, but I didn’t have to travel far to find similar buildings. The Whitley County Courthouse, built in 1888, sat right in the middle of our town square, its dome rising above everything else. Each time I saw it I felt inspired. That courthouse told me that my town mattered, that the law mattered, that something grander than everyday life was happening inside those limestone walls.

Congress should enshrine these architectural principles into law, so that more Americans can enjoy monuments like the Triumphal Arch, and courthouses like the Whitley County Courthouse.  

These are beautiful buildings that will last. They are worth it, and so is this country.

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