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Beneath the Surface

February 2025 | Eyesore

Loading ...James Howard Kunstler

February 5, 2025 • 3 minute, 14 second read


architecture

February 2025 | Eyesore
February 2025 | Eyesore

February 2025 | Eyesore

We pause in the usual cavalcade of horrors for a brief lesson.

James Howard Kunstler
Feb 5

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:

Kind of looks like a giant stroopwafel jammed under a coffee table. You can be sure that little good came out of it, especially the past four years, and probably the whole six decades of its miserable existence. FBI-Director nominee Kash Patel went so far as to propose it be turned into “a Museum of the Deep State.” Well, yes. Perfect!

Below, see another new-ish civic structure dressed in neo-Georgian formality: the Alpharetta, GA, City Hall by David M. Schwartz architects — granted, not a federal building, but proof that trad proportions and details can be done well, where there’s a will to get’er done. Nice, huh. Dignified. Serene, confident, legible. . . reflecting what is to be desired in a polity, sanity and grace.

Why trad design, you might ask? Initially, with our nation’s founding, there was a wish to express our national ethos in architecture that denoted the democratic spirit of Ancient Greece melded with the order of the early Roman republic. And so, you got this bold neoclassicism for over a hundred years, climaxing in the US Supreme Court’s headquarters, completed in 1935, below:

There are hidden charms in this neoclassicism. You may notice that the building is organized with a base, a middle and a top (or capitol). Indeed, not just the whole, but its parts ( e.g., the columns) express this tripartite organization. This expresses the organization of the human body, with feet and legs, a trunk, and a head. Thus, it reflects our essential humanness back at us and confers dignity in the works of man and mankind itself.

Sure there are other ways of making buildings, but are they expressing what we want to say about ourselves? Might we want to suggest that there is a sacred order to the human project, and be reminded of it forcefully in our monumental buildings?


This blog is sponsored this week by Vaulted, an online mobile web app for investing in allocated and deliverable physical gold. To learn more visit: Vaulted.com


Eyesore of the Month Since 1998

For the first time ever, you can now binge-read and comment on the complete “Eyesore of the Month” archive going all the way back to this feature’s debut in March 1998. That’s more than 300 architectural blunders, abortions and abominations to make you chortle, snort and guffaw. Click here to read them all.


Start writing


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The “No Kings” crowd might one day discover that the tyranny they fear doesn’t wear a crown. It wears a smile, signs checks, and calls itself “the common good.”

And like all monarchs in the end, it will demand obedience — long after the cheering stops.

If history rhymes, as it seems to, we’re somewhere between the late 1930s and the late Roman Republic. The crowds are restless, the debt insatiable, the elites insulated, and the reformers convinced they can vote their way to virtue. The yachts are still in the harbor; the customers are still swimming.

“No Kings”? Fine. But remember: every time the crowd dethrones a monarch, it tends to crown a bureaucracy. And bureaucracies, unlike kings, never die.

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If the boom continues, your portfolio participates. If it falters, your ballast buys you time—and maybe your own modest “yacht,” which Schwed would remind you is simply a sturdy rowboat, with good oars and a sound hull.

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October 20, 2025 • Addison Wiggin

Wall Street traders have a term for this phase: the wall of worry. As long as investors get fearful enough, the market top isn’t in.

At the top, investors will go all-in – in what’s known as the “blow of top”,  like they did with dotcom stocks in 1999, or as many did with SPAC companies in 2021.

We haven’t quite gotten to the “this time is different” mentality that causes investors to throw on the blinders – yet.

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Adam O’Dell: Gold’s $5,000 Moment?

October 17, 2025 • Adam O'Dell

Regardless of anyone’s personal opinion on Trump, it’s clear that the international community is translating his “Putting America First” agenda as something more like “Every Man for Himself.” That could have a profound impact down the line, not just for our future trade prospects, but for the health of the economy and the U.S. dollar at large (which is still the world’s dominant reserve currency, for now).

At the same time, this is all very bullish for gold, as central banks are likely to continue buying for years to come. In this kind of situation, gold hitting $4,300 and continuing to rise higher was a foregone conclusion, and it’s clear that Trump’s agenda is locked in and unlikely to change.

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