Can We Build Like the Founders Did?: Rodney Cook on Restoring America's Monuments

Can we still build like the Founders did?

In this episode of Founding Philosophies, host Kamron Spivey sits down with Rodney Mims Cook Jr. — chairman of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, president of the National Monuments Foundation, and a multi-generational Washington and Lee alum — to explore why beauty, memory, and monuments still matter for the American republic.

Drawing on his work reshaping Washington, D.C. and his family's personal ties to Robert E. Lee's legacy, Cook and Spivey explore:

The history of the L'Enfant Plan and the McMillan Plan, and how they shaped the axis of the National Mall

Why the Washington Monument's obelisk was built off-center — and how architects tricked the eye to fix it

The new Triumphal Arch proposed for Arlington National Cemetery, and its 26-year journey from rejected idea to presidential project

Rodney's role guiding the White House ballroom and other new construction in the nation's capital

His father Rodney Cook Sr.'s wartime trauma, his epiphany in the Lee Chapel, and how Robert E. Lee's post-war example shaped a lifelong friendship with Martin Luther King Sr. and Jr.

Why "intellectual hubris" — judging the past by the standards of the present — is a dangerous and anti-intellectual habit

Lessons on beauty and architecture learned working for King Charles III, and his warning about ugliness in public life

What America's monuments should say about the nation on the eve of its 250th anniversary

Founding Philosophies is a series exploring the ideas, lives, and moral frameworks of America's Revolutionary generation — and why they still matter.

WATCH: Rodney Mims Cook 2023 address in Lee Chapel: https://www.thegeneralsredoubt.us/press/where-the-twain-shall-meet-re-lee-and-mlk