In a video filmed during his recent trip to Moscow, Tucker Carlson angered a wide swath of political commentators for showcasing the artistic beauty of the Kiyevskaya metro station.
The station was built by Joseph Stalin in the 1950s, largely as a means to tout the USSR’s cultural infrastructure to the West, and is a stunning showcase of classical artistry.
Carlson, in his video, made a point of noting that the station is far more beautiful than the vast majority of infrastructure projects and buildings in Western cities today while also being devoid of gross smells and dirt. And it was this observation that elicited ridicule from the political establishment, which accused Carlson of being a Russian propagandist.
But in this rush to ridicule, Carlson’s critics missed the whole point of his video. It wasn’t to praise Moscow as the greatest city on Earth. It was to point out something that was lost in the West. After all, it was Western civilization that used to build some of the most beautiful and stunning buildings in the world, kept them in pristine condition, and turned them into sources of national pride.
Whether it was the multicentury effort to build the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, the imperial palace in Vienna, the English Parliament building in London, or the old Penn Station in New York City, all of these projects were built as cultural monuments that served real and practical purposes and could be seen and appreciated by every citizen.
Today, it is exceptionally rare to see a Western nation, especially the United States, build anything that remotely resembles the Kiyevskaya metro station or the old New York Penn Station that was demolished in 1963 to build Madison Square Garden. No one in their right mind would argue that MSG is a greater architectural beauty and marvel than the old Penn Station.
For whatever reason, architects and financiers of building projects have decided that steel pillars enveloped in concrete and glass are now the ideal monuments to inspire awe and instill a sense of civil pride in the beholder.
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But the concrete and glass jungles that are the defining features of U.S. cities today do nothing of the sort. Instead, these buildings have eliminated any sense of artistic beauty in architecture by turning buildings into faceless monuments to corporatism rather than celebrations of cultural heritage.
Whatever the motives that one may ascribe to Carlson’s showcase of the Kiyevskaya station, the state of this Moscow metro station in 2024 should serve as an inspiration for architects, artists, and city planners in the U.S. to build beautiful buildings once more.