GuitarAttack

Postwar U.S. architecture didn’t shift 2 modernism by accident. It was driven by ideologues who actively despised classical architecture + *usefully idiotic* bureaucrats/politicians who bought the sales pitch about efficiency, progress, & democracy. Guys like Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (who reshaped U.S. architecture schools at Harvard and IIT Chicago) taught that the decorative was “decadent,” classical design was a pre-war relic, & trad forms had 2 be purged for a hygienic future. Le Corbusier & *CIAM* pushed tabula-rasa “Radiant City” towers that erased old streetscapes. These ideas weren’t neutral preferences. They were ideological warfare against the Western past - “dust traps,” “bourgeois relics,” "fascist" enemies against "social progress". By the 1950s, modernist dogma dominated architectural schools & the entire field. Enter the *structural* machinery that amplified & entreched this ideology after 1945: A. Housing Act 1949 (Title I Slum Clearance + Title III Public Housing): 1,000,000,000s for federal grants for eminent domain “blight” clearance. Older/Classical/Beaux arts/Art Deco areas were bulldozed. Subsidies explicitly favored “new designs, materials, techniques” & "reduced costs" - just perfect for standardized modernist superblocks & high-rises for plazas. B. The Housing Act 1954 expanded it as full “urban renewal,” enabling more commercial clearance. For NYC, Robert Moses was a key player. C. Federal Property & Administrative Services Act 1949 created the GSA (General Services Admin). It centralized federal building design with outsourcing 2 private architects under efficiency mandates. Postwar industrial materials (glass, steel, cement) fit modernism like a glove. D. Federal-Aid Highway Act 1956: 90% federal funding tore expressways through old neighborhoods, clearing land for yet more modernist redevelopment. Indirectly against older styles but still devastating. E. NYC 1961: New policies like FAR for public plazas rewarded freestanding glass/steel tower forms (i.e.,Seagram Building). Classical buildings couldn’t compete for extra floor area. F. The culprit: 1962 Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture (drafted by Daniel Patrick Moynihan for JFK). Key line: 'Design must flow from the architects 2 the Government rather than vice versa'. When modernists proclaim that architecure is free without “official style", organic,etc its just subversive stage magic. It seems like democratic pluralism & anti-authoritarian freedom (vs. Soviet/Fascist), but the field was already ideologically captured by the avant-garde. Present day,etc = modernism exclusively. Peer-review panels & GSA boards filtered out classical/deco proposals as regressive & anti-progressive. Result: Brutalist HUD HQ, Mies’s Chicago Federal Center, + hundreds more. This was instituted authoritarian modernist entrustment at work. Ideologues provided the anti-classical worldview & literally redefined 'excellence', but useful idiots - Fair Deal political leaders chasing quick housing wins, GSA bureaucrats preoccupied by cost, Cold War liberals with short man issues wanting 2 look "modern" & "democratic" supplied the funding, eminent domain, & policy power. They bought the framing: modernism = efficiency + progress + democracy. Beauty? Classical/Art Deco = regressive + old + costly + fascism. The result: American cities & federal buildings got a de facto modernist status quo for 80 years. Classical & trad styles were marginalized by a handful little policy shifts & cultural capture by leftist ideologues, enabled by incentives that made more decorative styles uncompetitive.

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Afroman is a totally one-of-a-kind vibe.