What Trump’s “ballroom tsar” wants to build next

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.

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.

Nicknamed the “ballroom tsar”, Cook is a passionate defender of Trump’s controversial and unannounced demolition of the East Wing. In its place, the two men are no longer building just a ballroom.

The President conceded last month that an impenetrable underground fortress is being created that will include a military hospital, a scientific research laboratory, multiple secure rooms, and state-of-the-art defences that will leave the ballroom, in Trump’s words, “just a shield” above the rest of the complex.

Cook evinces no concern that the Fine Arts Commission he leads was not consulted before Trump ordered bulldozers onto White House grounds last October. “We should not be entertaining the world in tents” he told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, echoing Trump’s claims that the White House needs a ballroom to host foreign leaders.

Cook also insisted the design was “proportionate and beautiful” and claimed he had downsized some of the President’s initial desires. He dismissed naysayers – of which there are many – suggesting that objecting to change “seems to be the American thing now”.

Arguing that the ballroom project is merely the beginning, Cook has also spoken of trying to expand Washington’s National Mall, home to the Smithsonian Institution’s world-famous museums. He argues that L’Enfant’s vision for the city was never fully realised, so he hopes to create a series of new “gateways” into it, which he says were part of the original 18th- century plans.

He also wants to design an addition to the West Wing of the White House, providing future administrations with more workspace. As for the 200-year-old Ionic columns at the front of the complex, he wants them replaced by more ornate Corinthian pillars that can already be found at numerous Trump-owned properties.

Last week, Trump was caught on camera inspecting the existing columns, fuelling speculation that they are next on his to-do list. Cook told The Washington Post that “Corinthian is the highest order” of columns. “Why the White House didn’t originally use them… is beyond me,” he said.

The non-profit White House Historical Society describes the current columns, in place since 1830, as “iconic” and a key part of the original architectural vision for the complex.

Cook’s journey to the Court of Trump has been an unusual one. He lacks ideological ties to the Maga movement and first established his bona fides in his hometown of Atlanta, where civil rights leaders acclaimed his work redeveloping Vine City, a historically Black neighbourhood.

He enjoys ties to King Charles III, having served as a founding trustee of The Prince of Wales’ Institute of Architecture (now The King’s Foundation) and organised the design and construction of the World Athletes Monument in Atlanta, a royal gift to the city commemorating the 1996 Olympic Games.

Cook’s international relationships also include extensive links to Russia. His official biography notes that has given lectures at the Kremlin Armoury, at the Tolstoy estate outside the city of Tula, and at the Russian Embassy in Washington.

Only last week he raised eyebrows by becoming the first US official since 2017 to attend Vladimir Putin’s St Petersburg International Economic Forum. Cook told Russian state media that he had accepted an invitation to watch Putin’s address to the gathering, with news agency RIA-Novosti reporting that he had received State Department clearance to attend the event.

Unusually for a figure from the world of architecture, he has even been targeted by late-night comic Jimmy Kimmel. During a monologue lambasting the President’s planned triumphalist arch, Kimmel showed viewers a picture of Cook, described him as “looking like the Hogwarts professor who got fired for ogling Hermione”, and flayed him for thinking the monument is “just great”.

But Cook may end up enjoying the last laugh.

He claims to have spent three decades trying to convince residents and successive leaders in Washington to embrace the idea of multiple new arches for the city “to complete the L’Enfant plan”, but no one has ever taken him up on it.

In Trump, he may finally have found his man.