Ground was broken recently for the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park at the southern tip of Roosevelt Island in the East River across from the United Nations, according to a City Room article today by Sam Roberts at nytimes.com.
There was no ceremony or announcement and the article said that a formal groundbreaking will take place this summer.
The four-and-a-half-acre park was designed by Louis I. Kahn, the famous architect who died in 1974 in Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan with the final drawings for the park in his briefcase, Mr. Roberts wrote.
Forty years ago, the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute (then known as the Four Freedoms Foundation) initiated the planning of a memorial in New York and in 1973 Roosevelt Island was officially renamed from Welfare Island and plans for the memorial were disclosed, Mr. Roberts continued.
The memorial is expected to cost about $50 million and about $35 million has been raised so far, including $10 million in government funds and a $10 million gift from the Alphawood Foundation of Chicago.
The "Four Freedoms" - freedom of speech, religion and an absence of want and freedom from fear - were proclaimed by President Roosevelt in a speech in 1941 and the speech will be engraved in a copper beach tree-lined plaza that will also contain a bust of the former president.
The available money will cover the first two phases of the project, including the plaza, installation of the sculpture, the carving of the Four Freedoms text and shoreline improvements. A third phase, which is expected to take another 11 months and cost about $17 million, includes the tree planting, the lawn and the staircase that constitute the public space.
The Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation is completing Southpoint Park, 10 acres of "green rooms" and "wild gardens" surrounding an abandoned smallpox hospital north of the planned new memorial. Southpoint Park is scheduled to open next fall.
William J. vanden Heuvel, who established The Roosevelt Institute in Hyde Park, New York, was relatively sanguine about the long wait to build the memorial, pointing "out that the memorial in Washington to Abraham Lincoln, who died in 1865, wasn't dedicated until 1922," Mr. Roberts observed.
Mr. vanden Heuvel said that it is appropriate that construction will finally begin as the nation emerges from the biggest financial crisis since the Depression "and under a president whose oratory and goals evoke Roosevelt's New Deal," Mr. Roberts wrote.
There was no ceremony or announcement and the article said that a formal groundbreaking will take place this summer.
The four-and-a-half-acre park was designed by Louis I. Kahn, the famous architect who died in 1974 in Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan with the final drawings for the park in his briefcase, Mr. Roberts wrote.
Forty years ago, the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute (then known as the Four Freedoms Foundation) initiated the planning of a memorial in New York and in 1973 Roosevelt Island was officially renamed from Welfare Island and plans for the memorial were disclosed, Mr. Roberts continued.
The memorial is expected to cost about $50 million and about $35 million has been raised so far, including $10 million in government funds and a $10 million gift from the Alphawood Foundation of Chicago.
The "Four Freedoms" - freedom of speech, religion and an absence of want and freedom from fear - were proclaimed by President Roosevelt in a speech in 1941 and the speech will be engraved in a copper beach tree-lined plaza that will also contain a bust of the former president.
The available money will cover the first two phases of the project, including the plaza, installation of the sculpture, the carving of the Four Freedoms text and shoreline improvements. A third phase, which is expected to take another 11 months and cost about $17 million, includes the tree planting, the lawn and the staircase that constitute the public space.
The Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation is completing Southpoint Park, 10 acres of "green rooms" and "wild gardens" surrounding an abandoned smallpox hospital north of the planned new memorial. Southpoint Park is scheduled to open next fall.
William J. vanden Heuvel, who established The Roosevelt Institute in Hyde Park, New York, was relatively sanguine about the long wait to build the memorial, pointing "out that the memorial in Washington to Abraham Lincoln, who died in 1865, wasn't dedicated until 1922," Mr. Roberts observed.
Mr. vanden Heuvel said that it is appropriate that construction will finally begin as the nation emerges from the biggest financial crisis since the Depression "and under a president whose oratory and goals evoke Roosevelt's New Deal," Mr. Roberts wrote.
Architecture Critic
Carter Horsley
Since 1997, Carter B. Horsley has been the editorial director of CityRealty. He began his journalistic career at The New York Times in 1961 where he spent 26 years as a reporter specializing in real estate & architectural news. In 1987, he became the architecture critic and real estate editor of The New York Post.
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