Foundations

Adam Gopnik is right that Trump’s demolition of Roosevelt’s East Wing violates the democratic process (Comment, November 3rd). But the White House building itself is not exactly a paragon of democracy. Gopnik’s piece sent me back to John Ruskin, whom he cites as “the greatest of architectural critics.” In “The Stones of Venice,” Ruskin insists that buildings record not just the ideals of those who commissioned them but also the conditions of those who built them. The East Wing was grafted onto an original structure that was built in part by enslaved people. Its neoclassical form proclaimed republican ideals; its production betrayed them. Trump’s wrecking ball is crude, but the gap between democratic symbolism and democratic practice is not new.

Dylan Mulvaney

Brooklyn, N.Y.

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