The Capitol Building in Washington, DC. Photo Nicolas Raymond, via Flickr. Ten months ago, a draft executive order leaked from the Trump administration, aiming to “make federal buildings beautiful again” by mandating they be in classical styles. Now, outgoing president Donald Trump has officially signed the order on “promoting beautiful federal civic architecture.” All buildings costing over $50 million to design and build, the text says, should hew to classical designs and be “visibly identifiable as civic buildings.” Within the District of Columbia, “classical architecture shall be the preferred and default architecture for Federal public buildings absent exceptional factors necessitating another kind of architecture,” it says.