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Roman architecture and city planning produced places where everyone wants to be, unlike modern cities poxed by hideous architecture and cars

John Leake Jul 14, 2026

In an essay titled “The New Architecture,” published in the Baltimore Evening Sun in the late 1940s, HL Mencken described modernist architecture as ”harsh masses, hideous outlines, and bald metallic surfaces.” Modernist furniture he described as “ghastly imitations of the electric chair.” He contrasted modernism with the civilized and humane architecture of the 18th century Georgian period. In the US, this is often referred to as the Federal Style because it coincided with the Constitutional Convention.

In Boston, the foremost architect of the Federal Style was Charles Bullfinch, who designed many of the most beautiful townhouses on Beacon Hill, as well as the Massachusetts State House.

Bullfinch was influenced by the Scottish architect Robert Adam, who visited the Croatian, seaside town of Split in 1757 to study the remains of the Roman Emperor Diocletian’s palace. Commissioned as the emperor’s retirement residence, construction began around 295 AD and was completed by the time of his abdication in 305.

During Adam’s Grand Tour in 1757—accompanied by French architect and artist Charles-Louis Clérisseau—he visited Split (then Spalatro) to draw the ruins. His team performed detailed measurements, drawings, and surveys of the palace’s architecture, ornamentation, and spatial organization.

The result was Adam’s influential 1764 publication, Ruins of the Palace of the Emperor Diocletian at Spalatro in Dalmatia, a rich folio with engravings that showed the site to a wide European audience.

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