After February’s leak of the draft executive order to prefer traditional design for federal architecture, many architects, including some classicists, worried that classicism would be hurt by any proposal linked to President Trump. Now, on the heels of a congressional proposal to block the E.O. (if it is ever signed), a compromise proposal has emerged.

Instead of an executive order from the White House doing battle with an eventual act by Congress, why not negotiate over the wording of the Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture? The guidelines were written in 1962 by a young White House adviser, Daniel P. Moynihan, for the General Services Administration, the agency that oversees all federal architecture. (The late Senator Moynihan eventually represented New York in the upper house of the United States Congress.) This would avoid a lot of sound and fury!

....