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 physique a Triumphal Arch connected the outskirts of Washington, implicit the Memorial Bridge and crossed 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 woman liberty. It volition beryllium a monument to American exceptionalism, and a tribute to America’s 250th day this July. The Arch is classical President Trump: It says that America is not ashamed of its greatness, and that we are consenting to physique things worthy of our large nation. 

It besides is simply a hopeful motion of the Trump administration’s continued committedness to reviving classical architecture. Last summer, President Trump signed an enforcement order, "Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again," that directs the General Services Administration to guarantee caller national buildings "uplift and beautify nationalist spaces" and "ennoble the United States". The arch is the latest look yet of the question to reclaim quality arsenic a civic value, and I americium arrogant to basal down it.

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Elites who sneer astatine the arch would person you judge that expansive civic monuments are someway gaudy, or, adjacent little believably, fascistic. The New Yorker, among the snobbiest magazines successful circulation, precocious accused President Trump’s arch of belonging to an "Architecture of Autocracy."

But astir Americans instinctively recognize that quality successful nationalist spaces isn’t authoritarian; nationalist quality is simply a gift, and a important portion of our enactment inheritance and tradition. The Triumphal Arch’s plan complements the classical, antiauthoritarian architecture of the Capitol Building, the Washington Monument, and the Jefferson Memorial. 

Contrarily, the recent, modernist architecture successful Washington, D.C. that the Trump medication aims to supplant, is ugly, authoritarian and sticks retired similar a sore thumb. The J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building is simply a brutalist disaster. The Hubert Humphrey Building looks similar thing retired of a Soviet-era nightmare. Dr. Ben Carson famously called the HUD gathering "ten floors of basement." These hideous buildings successful the bosom of our nation’s superior little expectations astir our authorities and marque citizens consciousness small.

The Triumphal Arch reverses that connection entirely. It says that America is large and we’re not embarrassed to amusement it.

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I look guardant to seeing the operation of the Triumphal Arch implicit the adjacent respective months, and I americium hopeful it volition beryllium 1 of galore projects, on with the East Wing Ballroom, that reconstruct quality to national architecture. Earlier this year, I introduced the Beautifying Federal Civic Architecture Act, to codify into instrumentality what President Trump has already established by enforcement order. My measure volition guarantee that classical buildings similar the Triumphal Arch are built successful Washington, DC and astir the state for galore years to come. 

Because beauteous architecture shouldn’t beryllium reserved for Washington residents, and successful the past, it hasn’t been. I grew up successful a trailer parkland successful Columbia City, Indiana. My vicinity didn’t look similar the National Mall, but I didn't person to question acold to find akin buildings. The Whitley County Courthouse, built successful 1888, sat close successful the mediate of our municipality square, its dome rising supra everything else. Each clip I saw it I felt inspired. That courthouse told maine that my municipality mattered, that the instrumentality mattered, that thing grander than mundane beingness was happening wrong those limestone walls.

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Congress should enshrine these architectural principles into law, truthful that much Americans tin bask monuments similar the Triumphal Arch, and courthouses similar the Whitley County Courthouse.  

These are beauteous buildings that volition last. They are worthy it, and truthful is this country.

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