WASHINGTON DC – Sometimes, one triumphalist arch just isn’t enough. If architectural planner and designer Rodney Mims Cook Jr has his way, by the time Donald Trump leaves office there could be as many as three separate arches being built in Washington to commemorate the President for posterity.
Cook, appointed by Trump last year to head the US Commission of Fine Arts, is now the driving force behind his moves to alter Washington’s skyline permanently.
Whether it’s the new ballroom being constructed atop the remains of the East Wing of the White House, the gilded “Arc De Trump” that the President hopes will dwarf every other monument in the city, or even the possibility of replacing the iconic columns on the main entrance to the White House itself, Cook is Trump’s architectural Rasputin, egging the President on.
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While Pierre L’Enfant, the 18t- century French-American who served as George Washington’s personal city planner, is credited for his original layout of DC’s classical, low-rise design, Cook hopes to establish a similarly enduring legacy, even while critics question why traditional planning processes are being overlooked in the President’s rush to create gaudy new monuments to himself.
