Beautifying Federal Civic Architecture Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. BANKS. Mr. President, as you know, one of the great privileges of this job is to come down and to speak on this floor--the floor of the U.S. Senate--about the important issues of the day. What an honor it is as new Senators to come and look around and be stunned by this building, by this room, this floor.

There is something truly inspiring about such a beautiful room as this Chamber. In fact, I encourage everyone here--my colleagues, the pages, the staff, all of those in the Gallery who are with us today--to marvel at just how beautiful this room is. It is truly stunning.

Take a look around, and take it in. I have been here for a year and a half now. It never gets old, walking onto the floor of the U.S. Senate and being in this room, the Senate Chamber.

Look at the attention to detail, every bit of it, from the carpet to the ceiling, from the doors to the ornaments on the wall, the Senate floor is just one room in one of the most beautiful buildings in the entire world.

Beautiful architecture is a vital part of civic life. What any society builds is representative of the values that that society holds dear. A society that believes in its goodness and beauty will build beautiful things.

A great country will build great and beautiful buildings like this one, and then they will be shaped by them. In fact, it was the great Winston Churchill who said:

We shape our buildings and afterward our buildings shape us.

So well put.

But a society that has given up on believing in its goodness and beauty will fall into a cult of ugliness.

Sadly, the classical style of architecture that brought beauty to so much of the world has come under serious attack, and it is time to reverse that trend.

Last year, President Trump issued an Executive order just like one that he signed at the end of his first term and that he signed again at the beginning of his second term, called Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again. And that Executive order mandates that classical and traditional architecture is the design for Federal buildings.

Shortly after President Trump signed that Executive order, I introduced the Beautifying Federal Civic Architecture Act, which would make it the policy of the United States that classical and traditional architecture should be the preferred design for all Federal public buildings.

My bill also directs architects and buildings to consult with local communities where building projects are taking place and to hear directly from them about what they want to see built in their own communities.

I hope that my bill will soon get a vote on this floor to codify and make permanent what President Trump has done in his Executive order.

But I want to spend a few minutes on the floor today explaining why beautiful architecture really matters and what is lost when we abandon it.

I have talked before on this floor about my background. I grew up in a trailer park, the son of a factory worker in a small town in Indiana. The neighborhood that I was raised in, I suppose, didn't exactly have what you would call beautiful buildings that you would look around and admire.

But I didn't have to travel too far away from that trailer park to see beautiful architecture. I got used to seeing the magnificent county courthouse--the Whitley County Courthouse--in Columbia City, IN, my hometown, that is right in the middle of the town square. Every time I saw it, from the time I was a little boy until even today, when I drive by it and see it regularly, I am always inspired by the dome of that beautiful courthouse building in my small town.

I was the first in my family to go to college. And when I got to Indiana University, I looked around, and there were several beautiful buildings on the campus. The building that I spent the most time in was Woodburn Hall, and the intricate mural that was painted in Woodburn 101, where I heard most of my boring political science lectures, was painted by Thomas Hart Benton. I remember looking at that incredible mural during those lectures and being inspired by something beautiful.

Now, my Fort Wayne office, which is my State headquarters, was also the same office that I occupied when I served in the House of Representatives for 8 years in my district. My office in the E. Ross Adair Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse, in downtown Fort Wayne, is another great, classical-style building that is built in my State.

When I say that these buildings are inspiring, I am referring to that feeling that you get when you see something beautiful, something that is built to last, something that is transcendent.

Beautiful buildings make us look upward, toward the heavens, reminding us that there is something out there that is bigger than ourselves. That is the transformative power of beautiful architecture.

Across so much of Europe, you see these magnificent buildings that were built hundreds of years ago that are still standing today. We should still be able to build those same types of beautiful, long- lasting buildings in the United States of America.

Take a look at these two Federal courthouses, just as an example. Look at the Federal courthouse in my capital city, in Indianapolis, and then the Federal courthouse in Salt Lake City. And look at how the courthouse in Indianapolis looks sturdy and solid and how regal and beautiful it really looks with that design. It is a testament to the importance of the law.

And then take a look at the Federal courthouse in Salt Lake City--in downtown Salt Lake City--and you don't see any of that. In fact, frankly, it looks like a prison--I mean, literally. It lacks symmetry, and it is anything but beautiful. It is actually really gross, and a lot of people who live in Salt Lake City agree with that.

In fact, Indiana has a great track record of really building beautiful buildings, using classical architecture.

After I graduated college and worked at a few jobs here and there and moved back to start a family in my same hometown, outside of Fort Wayne, I went to work for a fifth-generation family commercial construction company called Hagerman Construction. They have built a lot of buildings from the early 1900s to today that use classical architecture styles.

But one of my favorite buildings that they ever built is the famous Lincoln Bank Tower in downtown Fort Wayne. It is built in art deco style, and it incorporates classical design elements. The Lincoln Bank Tower started construction in 1929, and it was finished in less than 1 year.

You think about that, and when I was working at that construction company, I used to talk to the project managers and the construction superintendents, and they used to tell me that there is no way you could build a building like the iconic and most beautiful building in downtown Fort Wayne, the Lincoln Tower, in less than a year.

In fact, it would take several years to build something like that today, and it would cost a whole lot more in today-dollars versus dollars in 1929 to do it. That is because of how much we have done that has created so much more redtape when you build buildings and all the hoops that you have to go through to build something as beautiful as something like that today.

Another example is the Christ Chapel at Hillsdale College. It is another beautiful, neoclassical building that happens to have been built by another company headquartered in Fort Wayne called Weigand Construction. It is truly one of the most beautiful buildings that I have ever seen or been in, in our great country.

Hoosiers know how to build beautiful things and build beautiful buildings. I am very proud of both of those buildings that have Hoosier roots.

As I said, I am the son of a factory worker and a nursing home cook. But though I come from humble beginnings, I couldn't help but be moved by these beautiful buildings in Indiana and other places I visited. Those beautiful buildings, which I still see today, made me realize that beautiful architecture really is for everybody.

They are not simply architecture--these big buildings, these beautiful buildings--they are not simply for rich people or the elites or the upper classes of our society. Everyone deserves to be surrounded by beauty, especially in this great country. That is especially true in Washington, DC, our Nation's Capital.

Washington, DC, is the most important and powerful city in the entire world, and I can't think of any other city that has been as consequential in world affairs as Washington, DC, the city that we are in today.

Given this city's power and importance, it should follow that DC would be beautiful, every bit of it. For large parts of DC, this city is truly magnificent.

Washington, DC, is home to some of the most beautiful buildings certainly anywhere in our country but anywhere around the world. We have the grandeur of the White House, the U.S. Capitol Building, the Library of Congress--truly one of my favorites--the Department of Agriculture, and many other beautiful buildings that make up this Capital City.

Because these buildings are built in classical and traditional styles, these buildings convey a sense of importance, power, and dignity. They tell us that those who pass through them and by them on sidewalks are important and that consequential things are happening inside of these buildings.

The old Senate Chamber, by the way, just down the hallway, is another incredible room that was designed by a brilliant architect named Benjamin Latrobe.

And when he built it, he talked about building the old Senate Chamber, and when he expanded it as the country expanded, he talked about how it represented a great and growing Nation. And then Dr. William Thornton was the original architect of the U.S. Capitol the guy who designed and built the place.

And he talked about how he designed it in a way for the Presiding Officer and I to be inspired as lawmakers to do good things. It just goes to show that architecture matters. And that is how we should think about the buildings all across Washington, DC, that they represent the very best of our Nation.

When President Trump decided to build a new White House ballroom, many of the so-called elites sneered at it. They made fun of it. They said it was gaudy and imperial, but really it was nothing like that. In fact, most Americans saw the ballroom as a return to grace. Finally, the White House would have a beautiful place to gather a lot of people, fitting of the important role for our Nation's most famous building to bring people together in an even more beautiful place than what it already is.

I am glad that President Trump is making Washington, DC, and the White House even more beautiful than what it was before, but, tragically, DC is also home to some of the ugliest buildings that you can find anywhere. They are some of the ugliest buildings certainly that I have ever seen, and it is because we allow brutalism to infect our Nation's Capital. Brutalism is an architectural style that emerged in the 1950s.

Brutalist buildings all look alike because they are all alike. They are made out of raw concrete. They are big blocks of raw concrete, and they are ugly because of that. They look like they are built on top of each other.

In fact, the J. Edgar Hoover Building the home of the FBI is an ugly brutalist disaster. The Hubert Humphrey Building home to the Department of Health and Human Services looks straight out of a communist, nightmarish block. In fact, Dr. Ben Carson who used to serve in that building referred to it as ``10 floors of basement,'' is what he called it.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is another awful building. These brutalist buildings have no place in our Nation's Capital because our country is not ugly. Actually, Dr. Carson served in the HUD building, and he called that 10 floors of basement.

We deserve to be inspired by the buildings around us, not depressed by them. The buildings that we build leave an impact on all of us. The question to ask is, How did we get here? How did we allow a cult of ugliness to take over large parts of the United States?

And make no mistake, this didn't happen by accident. Cultural elites did this on purpose. They made our world uglier because when you do that, you change what citizens expect from public life. A world that looks ugly produces a culture that only sees ugliness.

That is why the targets of the ugliness were often Federal and civic buildings. When official government business takes place in ugly buildings, the citizens lose belief in their government's goodness. But I am telling you, because of President Trump's Executive order and the bill that I have introduced, we can really change that one building at a time.

President Trump is leading the charge with his White House renovations and his Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again Executive order, and President Trump is making our country great and beautiful again. And that is why it is really important that we pass my bill the Beautifying Federal Civic Architecture Act.

We need to make sure that classical and traditional architecture are the preferred design preferences for all Federal buildings and that residents have a say in the types of buildings that are built in their communities. Elitist architects shouldn't be allowed to steamroll over regular Americans and force anti-American building designs on all of us.

Our country is beautiful. Our country is the greatest country on Earth in the history of the world, and we owe it to ourselves and our children to build beautiful buildings that reflect who we really are as a country.

And sure, maybe sometimes building beautiful buildings will cost more than building ugly ones--I will grant you that--but beautiful buildings last. They are transcendent; it is worth it. That is what our country deserves, especially this great country.

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