ATLANTA — On a sunny morning in June, Rodney Cook Jr. stood atop an 82-foot limestone arch embellished with Latin inscriptions and bronze sculptures, waving a salmon-striped shirtsleeve at the panorama below.
"Imagine this as something lovely, like the Royal Crescent in Bath," the genteel philanthropist enthused, pointing at the flat concrete roof of a row of new apartments. Just beyond were a squat IKEA warehouse, a parking lot and a 150,000-square-foot Target. "Imagine!"
Cook, 51, the descendant of one of Atlanta's oldest families, has long dreamed of bestowing a more classical architectural style upon his Southern hometown.
Friday, he unveiled the Millennium Gate, a grand homage to the Arch of Titus with a plaza lined with a curving colonnade and a sculptural allegory celebrating peaceful accomplishment over the last 2,000 years.
The $20-million structure, privately funded by Atlanta philanthropists, is the largest classical public monument built in the United States since the Jefferson Memorial opened in Washington in 1943.
It sits just off the 16-lane freeway that courses through Midtown Atlanta, soaring above a small retention pond in the city's biggest mixed-use development.
Yet it seems almost miniature when viewed against the backdrop of a shimmering 26-story glass hotel tower. From another angle -- in front of a Starbucks -- the yellow IKEA logo peeks through the arch. Some are already calling it the "Arche d'IKEA."
Americans have long approached public monuments with unease, and the Millennium Gate is no exception. Although Cook says he just wants his city to exude a little more charm, critics wonder whether it's possible to successfully graft a classical monument onto the mishmash of glossy skyscrapers, concrete parking lots and squat strip malls of Atlanta.
As the structure rose, it inspired 18 pages of comments on the online architecture forum Skyscraperpage.com. Aghast residents described it as a "mock homage to bombast" and a "kitschy McMonument that bespeaks a cultural inferiority complex for all the world to see."
"It's like Berlin building a half-size replica of a pyramid in 1880," railed a blogger. "Why?"
Within contemporary American architectural circles -- where many are concerned about declining infrastructure, inadequate transportation and retrofitting of buildings to make them more energy-efficient -- there is deep suspicion of neoclassical monuments.
