Washington Diary
Recorded: May 29, 2026, 2 a.m.
| Original | Summarized |
Washington diary - Works in Progress Magazine Podcast Newsletter Subscribe Films Books in Progress About Authors Pitch us Archive Subscribe Meet Viktor Read more → Words by Samuel Hughes Washington diary Translate Mins What Americans take to be a borrowed European tradition turns out to be a national style all of their own. I recently visited Washington DC, for the first time since I was a boy. Visiting Washington in person is like seeing the Mona Lisa: one has experienced it so many times in reproduction that it is almost eerie to see the real thing. I found the experience fascinating, and I have tried to write down a few of my thoughts and impressions.Each of the monumental buildings of Washington sits on its own city block, with a border of lawn separating it from the street, like a great roast turkey sitting alone on a silver dish. This quality of distinctness and separateness is a common aspiration of nineteenth-century design, but it was hard for Europeans to achieve amidst their dense and historically layered cities. In London, tremendous monumental buildings are piled up along crowded narrow streets and chaotic traffic islands, like the British Museum on Great Russell Street and the Palace of Westminster on Parliament Square. Not so in Washington, where every grand building rests calmly at the end of a long perspective. This certainly does give the city dignity, though perhaps it loses something of vitality at the same time. Get the print magazine Subscribe for $100 to receive six beautiful issues per year. Subscribe The buildings themselves are distinctive too. For one thing, most of them are faced in marble. Marble was used extensively for monuments in ancient Rome, but it has not been the dominant building stone in any great city of Europe since then, and in fact very few of Europe’s major buildings feature much exterior marble. Indeed I believe there is only one significant marble structure in London, the Marble Arch, whose material was so distinctive the building was named for it. In every European city the dominant building stone is limestone, or sandstone if limestone is unavailable, or granite if neither is. But because Washington was built so late in history, when transport costs had fallen, the Americans could access the wonderful building marbles of Georgia and Vermont, and create the world’s first marble city since antiquity. A realistic approximation of the difference between surface and subsurface reflection, generated using a computer simulation. Image Pat Hanrahan. Marble is favored by sculptors because of a feature called subsurface scattering. What this means is that marble is slightly translucent: sunlight not only illumines its surface, but a millimeter or so of its depth, creating a softly luminous quality in certain lights. Human flesh also has this feature, whence arises the special appeal of marble for sculptors of the human figure. I had read about subsurface scattering before, but I had never engaged seriously with the idea and slightly suspected it of being a pious canard. But in Washington, I became a believer. The monuments of Washington do seem to glow softly in the brilliant southern light: this does give them a sensuous quality, which becomes almost overwhelming when a whole city is built this way. I am not sure I am a good enough photographer to capture this effect, but I think you can see something of it in the contrast between the colonnade of the Jefferson Monument (Vermont marble) and the Church of the Madeleine in Paris (Lutetian limestone). The Jefferson Memorial on the left, made of Vermont marble, appears to glow in a way that the Church of the Madeleine on the right, made of Lutetian limestone, does not. Image Author’s collection. Washington’s monuments are stylistically unusual, too. For monumental architecture, the Americans traditionally favored the neoclassical style, drawn from Greco-Roman antiquity. Many people think of neoclassicism as, so to speak, the official style of Western civilization. There is an element of truth in this, but quite a limited one. When Europeans began to draw on ancient precedents in the Renaissance, they did so loosely and freely, and each country did so in its own way, such that French, German, Spanish and Italian Renaissance styles are highly distinct from each other. These national renaissance traditions continued in various forms for over three centuries. There was then a brief period of international neoclassicism in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, after which European architects mostly returned to their national idioms. The upshot of this is that the quantum of strictly neoclassical architecture in most European cities is actually very small. The most iconic form of classical architecture is the detached portico (the temple front with columns and a gable). I have had a go at counting detached porticos in the old city of Rome, in some sense the ‘world capital’ of classical architecture. I have found only two unambiguous examples, on the Pantheon and the Temple of Portunus, both of them survivors from antiquity. In Washington, by contrast, there are detached porticos in front of most major buildings, including, starting from the top, the Capitol, the White House, the Supreme Court, the Jefferson Monument, the National Gallery, and the Treasury Building.This leads me to the curious idea that what Americans think of as traditional European architecture – marble neoclassicism – is actually characteristic of Washington in a way that it is not, and has never been, characteristic of any city of post-antique Europe. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, American thinkers worried that their architects were copying European precedents rather than developing a national style of their own. But perhaps, in their fervor to emulate European antiquity, they had developed an American national style after all.I find longhaul flights extremely tedious, so I distract myself by watching films. Returning from Washington I watched Dune: Part One and Dune: Part Two, in which families of aristocratic spacemen compete to rule a Middle Eastern-themed planet called Arrakis. I enjoyed this very much, and I was fascinated by the architecture of the sets. There was something of the Sumerians, something of Boullée’s neoclassicism, a dash of Brazilian modernism, elements from Hindu temple architecture, lots of Islamic motifs, and maybe something of the Mayans, but all pared back, horizontal, massive and monochrome, blended together very harmoniously, plausibly futuristic and ancient at the same time. The designer of all this seems to be one Patrice Vermette, who has no historical or architectural training at all, having studied communications at Concordia University in Montreal. The star of Dune, an actor called Timothee Chalamet, recently generated something of a rumpus by criticizing the fustiness of opera and ballet. I find it pleasing that among his colleagues he has a historicist designer of some genius, who can draw upon a wide range of fusty sources with virtuosity. Translate Share this quoteplaceholder Enjoyed this? There's more. Sign up Samuel Hughes is an editor at Works in Progress. Stay in the Loop Sign up Contact ↑ Back to top Contact worksinprogress@stripe.com Questions about your subscription? wip-print@stripe.com Subscribe Subscribe Subscribe to our print magazine Manage your subscription Sign up for our digital newsletter Our privacy policy Our cookie policy Ethics & standards Works in Progress Magazine © 2026 | Designed by And–Now | Built by TGHP |
The author reflects on a first visit to Washington D.C., comparing the city's urban design and architectural characteristics with those of European cities. He observes that the monumental buildings in Washington are set apart with expansive lawns, each occupying its own city block, a spatial arrangement that he notes was difficult for eighteenth and nineteenth-century Europeans to achieve amidst their dense, historically layered urban centers. This distinct separation grants the city dignity, although the author speculates it may diminish some vitality. A significant aspect of Washington's construction is the use of marble. Because transportation costs had decreased in the late history, Americans were able to source building marbles from places like Georgia and Vermont, enabling the creation of what the author views as the world’s first marble city since antiquity. The author explores the aesthetic quality of marble, focusing on the phenomenon of subsurface scattering, which allows light to penetrate slightly into the material, creating a soft, luminous quality that appeals to sculptors. This effect is particularly striking in Washington's monuments, which the author suggests possess a sensuous glow under the southern light. The architectural style of Washington also merits examination. While Americans traditionally favored the neoclassical style derived from Greco-Roman antiquity, the author posits that this marble neoclassicism is characteristic of Washington, rather than being a typical feature of post-antique Europe. He contrasts this with the diverse and localized national Renaissance styles that characterized Europe. He observes that in Washington, there are numerous detached porticos—temple fronts with columns—present on major structures like the Capitol, the White House, and the Jefferson Monument, indicating that the perceived European model of classical architecture is not universally applicable there. In seeking alternative inspiration, the author turns to the aesthetics found in science fiction films. He finds fascination in the architecture of the Dune films, which synthesized disparate historical and architectural elements—such as Sumerian, Boullée’s neoclassicism, Hindu temple architecture, Islamic motifs, and Mayan elements—into a cohesive, horizontal, massive, and monochrome style. This fictional aesthetic, designed by Patrice Vermette, is perceived as harmoniously blending the futuristic with the ancient. The author concludes by noting the appreciation for a designer capable of drawing upon a broad spectrum of historic sources with virtuosity. |