A bibliography for Trump's Washington

If you read one book about the city Donald Trump has set out to transform, make it Howard Gillette's Between Justice & Beauty: Race, Planning, and the Failure of Urban Policy in Washington, D.C. It remains the most comprehensive survey sharpest critique of urban planning, thirty years after its first publication in 1995.

But Trump is not particularly fixated on most of DC, he wants to remake the National Mall and monuments. To understand the strange mix of conservatism and innovation in these spaces, see Kirk Savage's Monument Wars: Washington, D.C., the National Mall, and the Transformation of the Memorial Landscape. Yet despite how many people are discussing Trump's projects, the landscape of the Mall has bee anything but uncontroversial, nor have its memorials reflected consensus views. Its sites have been political from conception to groundbreaking, as Patrick Hagopian shows in is essay “The Korean War Veterans Memorial and Problems of Representation.” And even when these projects are done, their meaning is reshaped by visitors and activists. The greatest example of this is the way African Americans gradually reclaimed the Lincoln Memorial from a space of personal whitewashed reflection into one of collective protest. See Scott Sandage's essay "A Marble House Divided: The Lincoln Memorial, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Politics of Memory, 1939-1963," for this point. Other essentials include the symposium essays collected by Richard Longstreth in "The Mall in Washington 1791-1991.

The Trump admin has officially endorsed classical architecture as an official style, on the basis that it was the preferred style until those dang modernists ruined things. On the other hand, you can go look at the Smithsonian Castle (James Renwick, 1855) or the Corcoran Gallery (Ernest Flagg, 1897) realize that prominent buildings used to have plenty of variety until the the McMillan commission reimagined the city in 1902 and kicked off the City Beautiful movement. Although the designers leaned heavily on French estates for urban layout, they turned to an ahistorical version of Rome for the design of buildings. Indeed, its designers forced a particularly conservative form of classicism onto the Mall, as discussed Cynthia Field and Jeffrey Tilman's essay “Creating a Model for the National Mall: The Design of the National Museum of Natural History as well as Paris on the Potomac: The French Influence on the Architecture and Art of Washington, D.C., edited by Field with Isabelle Gournay and Thomas Somma. Ironically, the godfather of modern traditional architecture, Léon Krier, has been pretty critical of the McMillan Plan, even proposing a wonderfully provocative alternative.

FDR doubled down on this preference in his many interventions in Washington's built environment. See William Rhoads “Franklin D. Roosevelt and Washington Architecture.” This built on the cautious tastes of his uncle Frederic Delano, Herbert Hoover, and an organization called the American Civic Association (the subject of my book). A comprehensive survey can be found in the Commission of Fine Arts' megalithic 2013 survey Civic Art: A Centennial History of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts. And of course, you can go to the sources themselves: the McMillan Commission's Improvement of the Park System of the District of Columbia, as well as NCPC's recent Extending the Legacy and Monumental Core Framework plans.

But this kind of classical architecture is does not satisfy Donald Trump's tastes. He has said multiple times that he takes inspiration from the interiors of Versailles: architecture that flaunts wealth, status, and power. Robert Wellington, in his book Versailles Mirrored: The Power of Luxury, Louis XIV to Donald Trump charts this interest and shows that he adopted it from the imitations of baroque architecture in Gilded Age estates and hotels, particularly the Plaza. Wellington also examines the influence of Trump's class anxieties on his aesthetic, particularly how he consistently rejects aristocratic notions of "good taste" to display wealth more explicitly.

Finally, if you are really interested in the quirky stone pile that Trump wants to paint white, you will enjoy the CFA's Palace of State: The Eisenhower Executive Office Building. The buildings Victorian interiors are also a heady rejection of "good taste," but in a much more charming way. It's a great way to peer into a spaces that the public almost never has access to.

This only scratches the surface, there is a lot below. It is not meant to be a comprehensive history of Washington, DC, but instead the urbanism of the "Monumental Core" and Donald Trump if possible. If you have suggestions, I'd love them, @ me.

Further Reading:

Asch, Chris M. and G. Derek Musgrove. Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation's Capital. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017.

Abbott, Carl. Political Terrain: Washington, D.C., from Tidewater Town to Global Metropolis. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.

Barber, Lucy G. Marching on Washington: The Forging of an American Political Tradition. University of California Press, 2002.

Chornesky, Michael B. “Confederate Island upon the Union’s ‘Most Hallowed Ground’: The Battle to Interpret Arlington House, 1921-1937.” Washington History 27, no. 1 (2015): 20–33.

Fanning, Kay and Thomas E. Luebke. American Shrines: The Architecture of Presidential Commemoration. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2025.

Fogelsong, Richard E. “Planning the City Beautiful.” In Planning the Capitalist City: The Colonial Era to the 1920s. Princeton University Press, 1986.

Glazer, Nathan and Cynthia R. Field, eds. The National Mall: Rethinking Washington's Monumental Core. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.

Gutheim, Frederick and Antoinette Lee. Worthy of the Nation: Washington, DC, from L'Enfant to the National Capital Planning Commission, 2nd ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.

Hagopian, Patrick. The Vietnam War in American Memory: Veterans, Memorials, and the Politics of Healing. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2009.

Hass, Kristin Ann. Sacrificing Soldiers on the National Mall. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013.

Helfrich, Kurt. “Modernism for Washington? The Kennedys and the Redesign of Lafayette Square.” Washington History8, no. 1 (1996): 16–37.

Kirsch, Scott. “Aesthetic Regime Change The Burnham Plans and US Landscape Imperialism in the Philippines.” Philippine Studies: Historical & Ethnographic Viewpoints 65, no. 3 (2017): 315–56.

Kohler, Sue A., Scott, Pamela, eds. Designing the Nation's Capital: The 1901 Plan for Washington, DC. Washington: United States Commission of Fine Arts, 2006.

Lessoff, Alan. The Nation and Its City: Politics, Corruption, and Progress in Washington, D.C., 1861-1902. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.

Logan, Cameron. Historic Capital: Preservation, Race, and Real Estate in Washington, D.C. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017.

Meyer, Elizabeth K. “The Mount Vernon Memorial Highway: The Machine in the Modern American Garden.” In Parkways, Greenways, Riverways: The Way More Beautiful, ed. Woodward S. Bousquet, Thomas E. Rash, and Mark H. Suggs. Appalachian State University, 1989.

Mills, Nicolaus. Their Last Battle: The Fight for the National World War II Memorial. New York: Basic Books, 2009.

Myer, Donald Beekman. “Unbuilt Bridges of Washington, D.C.” Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D.C. 49 (1973): 137–50.

Peterson, Jon A. The Birth of City Planning in the United States, 1840-1917. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.

Reps, John W. Monumental Washington: The Planning and Development of the Capital Center. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967.

Rydell, Robert. All the World’s a Fair: Visions of Empire and American International Exhibitions, 1876–1916. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.

Scott, Pamela. Capital Engineers, The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the Development of Washington, D.C. 1790—2004. Alexandria: United States Army Corps of Engineers Office of History, 2011.

Taylor, Dorceta. The Environment and the People in American Cities, 1600s-1900s: Disorder, Inequality and Social Change. Durham: Duke University Press, 2009.

Thomas, Christopher A. The Lincoln Memorial & American Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002.

Tompkins, Sally Kress. A Quest for Grandeur: Charles Moore and the Federal Triangle. Washington: Smithsonian, 1993.

Wilson, William H. The City Beautiful Movement. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.

Witt, Matthew T. “America’s Palimpsest: Ground-Zero Democracy and the Capitol Mall.” Public Administration Review 65, no. 5 (2005): 517–33.

Sickos only:

Abrams, Brett L. Capital Sporting Grounds: A History of Stadium and Ballpark Construction in Washington, D.C. Jefferson: McFarland, 2009.

Alexis, Karin M. E. “The American University: Classical Visions of the National University.” Records of the Columbia Historical Society 52 (1989): 163–82.

Alofsin, Anthony, ed. "Symposium Papers L: A Modernist Museum in Perspective: The East Building, National Gallery of Art" Studies in the History of Art 73 (2009).

Atherton, Charles H. “An Insider’s Reflections on the Development of Washington 1960-2004.” Washington History 18, no. 1/2 (2006): 46–77.

Bacon, Henry. “The National Memorial to Lincoln.” Art and Progress 4, no. 3 (1913): 826–30.

Babin, Patricia. Links to the Past: A Historic Resource Study of National Park Service Golf Courses in the District of Columbia. National Park Service, 2017.

Bedini, Silvio A. “The Survey of the Federal Territory: Andrew Ellicott and Benjamin Banneker.” Washington History 3, no. 1 (1991): 76–95.

Belanger, Dian Olson. “The Railroad in the Park: Washington’s Baltimore & Potomac Station, 1872-1907.” Washington History 2, no. 1 (1990): 4–27.

Benton-Short, Lisa. “Politics, Public Space, and Memorials: The Brawl on the Mall.” Urban Geography 27, no. 4 (2006): 297–329.

Bowling, Kenneth R. “From ‘Federal Town’ to ‘National Capital’: Ulysses S. Grant and the Reconstruction of Washington, D.C.” Washington History 14, no. 1 (2002): 8–25.

Brown, Glenn. “The Choice of Location of the Lincoln Memorial.” The American Magazine of Art 17, no. 6 (1926): 275–81.

Burnap, George. Parks: Their Design, Equipment, and Use. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1916. Internet Archive.

Bushong, William B. "Glenn Brown, the American Institute of Architects, and the Development of the Civic Core of Washington, D.C. Diss. (George Washington University, 1988). Proquest UMI.

Caemmerer, H. Paul. “Charles Moore and the Plan of Washington.” Records of the Columbia Historical Society 46/47 (1944): 237–58.

Caemmerer, H. Paul. “The Corps of Engineers and the Capital City.” The Military Engineer 45, no. 305 (1953): 206–10.

Clarke, Gilmore D. “Our Highway Problem.” The American Magazine of Art 25, no. 5 (1932): 285–90.

Clarke, Gilmore D. “The Mount Vernon Memorial Highway.” Landscape Architecture 22, no. 3 (1932): 178–89.

Culbertson, Graham. “Frederick Douglass’s ‘Our National Capital’: Updating L’Enfant for an Era of Integration.” Journal of American Studies 48, no. 4 (2014): 911–35.

Davis, Timothy M. "Mount Vernon Memorial Highway and the Evolution of the American Parkway. Diss. (University of Texas at Austin, 1997). Proquest UMI.

DeFerrari, John and Peter Sefton. Sixteenth Street NW: Washington, DC's Avenue of Ambitions. Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2022.

Eliot, Charles W. “A Great and Effective City” The American Magazine of Art 23, no. 2 (1931): 129–36.

Elzey, Chris and David K. Wiggins. DC Sports: The Nation's Capital at Play. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2015.

Grant, Ulysses S. “Planning the Nation’s Capital.” Records of the Columbia Historical Society 50 (1948): 43–58.

Glazer, Nathan. From a Cause to a Style: Modernist Architecture’s Encounter with the American City. Princeton University Press, 2007.

Gurney, George. “Sculpting the World War II Memorial: A Conversation with Raymond Kaskey.” American Art 18, no. 2 (2004): 96–105.

Gurney, George. Sculpture and the Federal Triangle. Washington: Smithsonian, 1985.

Hagopian, Patrick. “From a ‘New Paradigm’ to ‘Memorial Sprawl’: The Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Memorial.” In Constructing Presidential Legacy: How We Remember the American President, vol. 1, ed. Michael Patrick Cullinane and Sylvia Ellis. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018. [editorial note: I was involved in the Eisenhower Memorial controversy, and I think Hagopian builds his narrative and arguments on public statements that cannot be taken uncritically. Any historian should be very mindful that most critical discussions involving building projects in DC are made off-record and public statements are made with legal and historical considerations in mind. And Donald Trump just makes s.]

Harrison, Renee K. “Black Builders: Slave Pens, and the Construction of the National Seat of Government.” In Black Hands, White House: Slave Labor and the Making of America. Augsburg Fortress, 2021.

Hatcher, Ed. “Washington’s Nineteenth-Century Citizens’ Associations and the Senate Park Commission Plan.” Washington History 14, no. 2 (2002): 70–95.

Heine, Cornelius W. “The Contributions of Charles Carroll Glover and Other Citizens to the Development of the National Capital.” Records of the Columbia Historical Society 53/56 (1953): 229–48.

Havig, Alan. “Presidential Images, History, and Homage: Memorializing Theodore Roosevelt, 1919-1967.” American Quarterly 30, no. 4 (1978): 514–32.

Hawley, Thomas M. “Practices of Memorialization: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the Tomb of the Vietnam War Unknown Soldier, and the POW/MIA Flag.” In The Remains of War: Bodies, Politics, and the Search for American Soldiers Unaccounted For in Southeast Asia. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005. 

Hyman, Isabelle. “Marcel Breuer and the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 54, no. 4 (1995): 446–58.

Kirsch, George B. “Municipal Golf and Civil Rights in the United States, 1910-1965.” The Journal of African American History 92, no. 3 (2007): 371–91.

LaRoche, Cheryl J. Reconstruction and the Early Civil Rights Movement in the National Capital Area. Historic Resource Study. National Park Service, 2021.

Larson, Victoria S. Tietze. “Memorializing Jefferson: Imperial Designs and the Battle of the Cherry Blossoms.” International Journal of the Classical Tradition 22, no. 3 (2015): 304–40.

Mellon, Andrew W. “The Development of Washington.” The American Magazine of Art 20, no. 1 (1929): 3–9.

Meyer, Elizabeth K. “From Urban Prospect to Retrospect: Lessons from the World War II Memorial Debates.” Journal of Architectural Education (1984-) 61, no. 3 (2008): 57–63.

Miller, Elizabeth J. “Dreams of Being the Capital of Commerce: The National Fair of 1879.” Records of the Columbia Historical Society 51 (1984): 71–82.

Muse, Clifford L. “Howard University and The Federal Government During The Presidential Administrations of Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1928-1945.” The Journal of Negro History 76, no. 1/4 (1991): 1–20.

Moore, Charles. “Personalities in Washington Architecture.” Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D.C. 37/38 (1937): 1–15.

Nagle, John L. “The Arlington Memorial Bridge.” The Military Engineer 20, no. 110 (1928): 154–60.

Nagle, John L. “Draw Span of Arlington Memorial Bridge.” The Military Engineer 22, no. 126 (1930): 518–22.

O’Connor, James A. “Foundations of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.” Professional Memoirs, Corps of Engineers, United States Army, and Engineer Department at Large 8, no. 38 (1916): 129–48.

Olin, Laurie. “The FDR Memorial Wheelchair Controversy and a ‘Taking Part’ Workshop Experience.” Landscape Journal 31, no. 1/2 (2012): 183–97.

Orlin, Glenn S. “Roads and Parks in Harmony.” Washington History 1, no. 1 (1989): 58–69.

Parsons, John G. “The Public Struggle to Erect the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial.” Landscape Journal 31, no. 1/2 (2012): 145–59.

Percoco, James A., and Hardol Holzer. “A Lincoln for the Masses: Daniel Chester French’s Seated Lincoln (1922), Washington, D.C.” In Summers with Lincoln: Looking for the Man in the Monuments. Fordham University Press, 2008.

Peets, Elbert. “Current Town Planning in Washington.” The Town Planning Review 14, no. 4 (1931): 219–37.

Peters, Charles A. “The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.” The Military Engineer 15, no. 81 (1923): 209–13.

Peterson, Merrill D. Lincoln in American Memory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Rainey, Reuben M. “The Choreography of Memory: Lawrence Halprin’s Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial.” Landscape Journal 31, no. 1/2 (2012): 161–82.

Reps, John W. “Burnham before Chicago: The Birth of Modern American Urban Planning.” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 10 (1983): 191–217.

Rodriguez, Alicia. “New Meaning for an Old Wall.” Landscape Architecture 90, no. 1 (2000): 22–25.

Russello Ammon, F. "Commemoration Amid Criticism: The Mixed Legacy of Urban Renewal in Southwest Washington, D.C." Journal of Planning History 8, no. 3 (2009): 175-220.

Sonne, Wolfgang. “The Capital City as a Microcosm of the State: The Case of Washington.” Thresholds, no. 30 (2005): 80–87.

Tatum, George B. and Elisabeth B. MacDougal. Prophet with Honor
The Career of Andrew Jackson Downing, 1815–1852. Washington: Dumbarton Oaks, 1989.

Thomas, Christopher A. “The Marble of the Lincoln Memorial: ‘Whitest, Prettiest, and ... Best.’” Washington History 5, no. 2 (1993): 42–63.

Tobin, William Anthony. "In the Shadow of the Capitol: The Transformation of Washington, D.C. and the Elaboration of the Modern United States Nation-state." Diss. (Stanford Junior University, 1994). Proquest UMI.

Williams, Kim Prothro. “The Garden Club of America Entrance Markers to Washington.” Washington History 19/20 (2007): 68–75.

Zenzen, Joan M. An Urban Oasis: Rock Creek Park's History and Management. National Park Service, 2020.

“The Plan of Washington: Preservation of L'Enfant's Central Composition:” Landscape Architecture 28, no. 1 (1937): 13–16.

For more projects from the last twenty years, see the NPS Park Planning website.

Thanks to ‪Zachary Schrag‬, Geoff Hatchard, James Dunbar, Kim Bender, Minor White's Twilight Zone System, and Two Brave Federal Employees Who Must Remain Anonymous for suggestions.

Last updated 6/23