Concerning President Donald Trump’s executive order requiring new federal buildings to show a preference for "classical architectural style" which includes Neoclassical, Georgian, Federal, Greek Revival, Beaux-Arts, and Art Deco, referencing the architectural traditions of Greek and Roman antiquity. . .

Behold (above) the federal building and courthouse in Tuscaloosa, Alabama by HBRA Architects. And, no, it was not conceived when Andy Jackson was fighting the Battle of Emuckfaw against the “Red Stick” Creek Indians in 1814. Rather, it went up in 2012, a rare example of neoclassical design executed in our time.

For the most part, though, the decades-long trend in American civic architecture has been for sui generis one-off, tortured-genius, para-metaphysical, high-tech, in-your-grille stunt buildings commissioned to shock and confound the middle class (Épater le bourgeois, as the French dubbed this maneuver).

These generally horrified the public (as intended), as well as perplexing and confusing them, making their interaction with the building a form of punishment. Often it was difficult to even discern where the entrance of the building was, or where to go once you managed to get inside. For instance, the recent San Francisco Federal building by Tom Mayne of Morphosis Architects, below, designed in the style of a dashboard from an alien spacecraft:

At its worst, you got the conjunction of malign form and evil function, as concretized in Washington’s J. Edgar Hoover Building, home office (mother ship) of the FBI, below: