With Donald Trump issuing his executive order calling for future federal buildings to be “beautiful,” I extended my Twitter thread contrasting comparable buildings from before and after WWII, such as upscale municipalities’ city halls, other government buildings, public libraries and the like. The order is pretty rambling, but people seemed to like it.

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One reason for the dichotomy is that Beverly Hills in 1932 saw a spectacular city hall as good advertising for attracting newcomers to Beverly Hills to buy up its empty lots. In contrast, modern Malibu doesn’t want more residents. Its civic motto is “Get out of Malibu, Lebowski!”

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And win.

Not surprisingly, construction began a month before the stock market crash of October 1929.

Thom Mayne's 2005 federal building in San Francisco. Starchitect Mayne is secretly an anti-government extremist who designs ugly and misanthropic government buildings because he hates bureaucrats and wants them to suffer from 9 to 5 every day of the work week. pic.twitter.com/WO54TIaAgj

— Steve Sailer (@Steve_Sailer) December 22, 2020

That’s just a joke. Mayne is a leftist. He doesn’t hate bureaucrats in particular, he hates everybody.

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Many of the best buildings in America were commissioned during the Roaring Twenties, when money, high spirits, and (surprisingly) good taste, were abundant, although some, like Buffalo's stupendous city hall, weren't finished until after the Crash of 1929.

— Steve Sailer (@Steve_Sailer) December 22, 2020

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All this isn't to say that it's impossible for a talented-enough architect to create something beautiful in just about any style. But the headwinds began blowing against achieving beauty with the 1929 stock market crash and turned into a gale by 1945.

— Steve Sailer (@Steve_Sailer) December 24, 2020

“You people, you like domes, right? Okay, okay, we’ll build you a dome out in the front of city hall for your tacky weddings and proms. But we’re not going to taint the architectural integrity of the actual San Jose city hall by including a dome in the main building.”

For example, here's Richard Meier's 2016 San Jose, CA city hall, which has been Thom Mayneized-Richard Gehryized with what looks like lots of chain link fencing attached at random to the outside: pic.twitter.com/CPNjr0ZaCD

— Steve Sailer (@Steve_Sailer) December 24, 2020

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Tourists like to hang out on the steps in front of the New York Public Library: pic.twitter.com/kzdFP23b1J

— Steve Sailer (@Steve_Sailer) December 24, 2020

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