There鈥檚 a reason God created dynamite.
The brutalist federal buildings that have blighted Washington, DC for decades deserve the same fate as Carthage after the Third Punic War, and the nation鈥檚 capital is finally beginning to move on from these concrete monstrosities.
The Department of Housing and Urban and Development just announced that it is leaving its godawful headquarters in Washington for less hideous space in northern Virginia.
HUD Secretary Scott Turner has described the structure as 鈥渢he ugliest building in DC,鈥 which is a dubious claim only because there are so many other buildings in Washington that compete for that distinction.
He鈥檚 not the first HUD secretary to hate the building. Jack Kemp called it 鈥10 floors of basement.鈥
Meanwhile, the FBI is also departing its HQ, designated by the UK building materials retailer Buildworld as the ugliest building in the United States and the second ugliest in the world.
The moves are in keeping with the spirit of President Donald Trump鈥檚 executive order stipulating that federal buildings should 鈥渞espect regional, traditional, and classical architectural heritage in order to uplift and beautify public spaces and ennoble the United States and our system of self-government.鈥
That EO should be considered common sense, but has several trigger words for defenders of the architectural status quo, including 鈥渢raditional,鈥 鈥渃lassical,鈥 and perhaps foremost of all, 鈥渂eautify.鈥
In response, the American Institute of Architects expressed its 鈥渟trong concerns that mandating architecture styles stifles innovation and harms local communities.鈥
According to The Nation magazine, Trump鈥檚 initiative is part of an agenda to 鈥渢o make historical architecture on the whole inextricable from Eurocentric white supremacy.鈥
In short, it鈥檚 an unforgivable offense to want a government building to look nice.
Brutalism, with its blocky, minimalist structures made of poured concrete, was a creation of a post-war Europe that wanted to embrace the fresh and new and to economize on rebuilding.
Although the name 鈥渂rutalism鈥 perfectly captures the aesthetic effect, it actually comes from the French for raw concrete, b茅ton brut.
To be sure, concrete is extremely important to modern life, but no one has ever said, 鈥淥h, it鈥檚 so elegant and uplifting.鈥
The brutalist buildings in Washington were largely built between the late 1960s and mid-1970s 鈥 an era of grievous architectural mistakes, including cookie-cutter multiple-purpose baseball stadiums and modernist Catholic churches.
The buildings never had a heyday, but were hated when they were erected and are still hated now.
The seedbed of the trend was a Kennedy administration commission that advocated contemporary designs and said 鈥 laughably, in retrospect 鈥 that federal architecture should 鈥渞eflect the dignity, enterprise, vigor and stability of the American national government.鈥
Instead, the brutalist buildings speak of a lumbering bureaucracy with no regard for the sensibilities or priorities of ordinary people.
They are about what you鈥檇 expect if a DMV were headquartered in a maximum-security prison, or in a massive pillbox.
These buildings could easily be used as stage sets for docudramas about East Germany.
They are a tribute to soulless monumentality and a gut punch to the human spirit.
If they don鈥檛 eventually get a well-deserved appointment with a wrecking ball, they should be donated to North Korea.
The original justifications of brutalism no longer apply. The buildings aren鈥檛 new anymore, and they aren鈥檛 cheap.
They haven鈥檛 aged well in any sense, not aesthetically or functionally. The FBI building is literally falling apart, and the expense of maintaining the HUD building has become ruinous.
Defenders of the brutalist buildings say that they are now part of our heritage and should be preserved as such.
That鈥檚 not fair, though, to the people who have to work in them, or who walk or drive by them every day. They are a net subtraction to the DC landscape and to human happiness.
If one of them has to be kept for historical reasons, it should be made into a Smithsonian museum devoted to idiotic fads that were indulged much too long.
Twitter: @RichLowry