On 13 May 2013, Australian Consul-General Phil Scanlan AM led an official visit to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park. During the visit to the memorial on Roosevelt Island, Consul-General Scanlan recalled the connections forged between the United States and Australia by President Roosevelt.

On 22 February 1942, Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered General Douglas MacArthur to leave the Philippines as the American defence of the islands collapsed, and to head to Australia where he would take control of additional American troops. General MacArthur arrived in northern Australia on 17 March 1942, and headed south down to Melbourne, where he discovered that there were far fewer troops than initially thought. In a press statement General MacArthur told his men and the people of the Philippines “I shall return,” a catchphrase that became synonymous with General MacArthur’s leadership.

Australian Consul-General Phil Scanlan AM and Mrs. Julie Singer Scanlan at President Roosevelt's bust.

In addition, Australia was visited by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt during World War II, who made an official visit to the United States Embassy in Canberra, Australia’s capital city.

These visits built on ties forged by President Theodore Roosevelt, who sent the United States naval battle fleet, known as the ‘Great White Fleet’ to Australia in 1908. This visit was commemorated with the return of a US warship, the USS John McCain, to Sydney in 2008, as well as two Australian ships, the HMAS Sydney and HMAS Ballarat, to New York in 2009.

These events contributed to forging the strong social, economic and political ties that the United States and Australia share today.

To Ambassador William vanden Heuval, Chairman of the Four Freedoms Park Conservancy, on 14 May 2013 Consul-General Phil Scanlan wrote:

In his message of condolence to Eleanor Roosevelt following President Roosevelt’s death on April 12, 1945, Australia’s wartime Prime Minister John Curtin spoke for all of his fellow Australians, saying that he hoped Mrs. Roosevelt would "draw some comfort from the fact that your husband died in the care of all humanity, and in a duty from which he never swerved."

Australia’s destiny in the twenty-first century is to become a prototypical Eurasian nation, where the diversity of our people is celebrated as a national asset, as is our vibrant democracy underwritten by the rule of law.

Australia today embodies the enshrinement of the Four Freedoms into the Charter of United Nations. Your vision of the umbilical connection between Roosevelt Island Four Freedoms Park and the United Nations on the East River, is one we fully share.

You and your many colleagues deserve enormous credit for your patience, persistence and perseverance in seeing through the establishment of Four Freedoms Park with such devotion. I know you have more plans to appropriately develop the site in the cause of education and advancing human freedom.

It is our intention to be regular visitors and supporters of what is, after all, an expression of human values as dear to Australians as to Americans.

Below are some #FDRPhotooftheWeek Park photos. Enjoy!

"Architecture is the thoughtful making of spaces. It is the creating of spaces that evoke a feeling of appropriate use." — Louis I. Kahn

Photo credit: @chrisoulakapelonis

Photo credit: @matthewkirknyc

Photo credit: @bsaucoin

Photo credit: @lordson

Photo credit: @knowawinkler

Photo credit: @gorriti

Having heard the Park had opened in the fall, I knew it could be the perfect destination. With district support, the "guys" were able to make the journey on public transportation from Long Island. They seemed to enjoy the Tram almost as much as Suzy Brown's informative tour. The optical illusions and how the stone was chiseled with lettering is something they are all still talking about! What an awesome day!

-Emily Peterson, The East Moriches School District

We had a great turnout!

The Room was full of visitors enjoying the New York City skyline from across the East River. 

We also participated in the second annual I Love My Park Day! This is a statewide event, organized by Parks & Trails New York (PTNY) in partnership with the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation (OPRHP) and local Friends groups, to celebrate and enhance New York’s parks and historic sites and bring visibility to the State Park system and its needs. The NY State Commission on National and Community Service joined the effort this year to help recruit volunteers, promote the initiative and engage AmeriCorps members to support to projects across the state. Volunteers celebrated New York’s park system by cleaning up park lands and beaches, planting trees and gardens, restoring trails and wildlife habitat, removing invasive species, and working on various site improvement projects.

We had an amazing group of volunters who did a beautiful job weeding under the Copper Beech trees. 

Check out the progress that was made! Below you can see the pachysandra beneath the Copper Beech trees, before and after weeding.

The Littleleaf Linden buds have sprouted! We're patiently awaiting their first blossom of the season. Lindens produce a small yellow flower, it only lasts a week on the tree. Head on out to the Park this Spring and check out the blossoms - they should be in bloom any day now! We'll keep you posted.

Starting Wednesday, April 24, Four Freedoms Park will expand its hours to 6 days a week, 9 am to 7 pm.  We will be closed on Tuesdays.

Which Way Do We Run From Fear? by Ambassador William J. vanden Heuvel on The Huffington Post.

"After the dead are memorialized, after the culprit is found and brought to justice, after the narrative of Boston is written and the tragedy takes its place in the pages of history, the question for us becomes how do we carry on? How do we do our best to honor the memory of the deceased? Faced with the unthinkable, which way do we run? The marathoners and spectators who raced to the aid of others provide one answer. A great president stricken with polio provides another. In the face of fear, stand your ground."

-Ambassador William J. vanden Heuvel

Last Friday we held a wreath laying ceremony to honor the President on the 68th anniversary of his death. Ambassador William J. vanden Heuvel and Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr. layed a wreath in front of President Roosevelt's bust. The wreath was constructed of flowers that included the President's favorite color, blue. Four Honor Guards marched down the forecourt and lined the entrance to the Room. The rainy morning made the ceremony that much more memorable.

Listen to Ambassador William J. vanden Heuvel at the wreath laying ceremony as he remembers President Roosevelt's death on April 12, 1945.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage on April 12, 1945 in Warm Springs, Georgia at the rehabilitation center for the treatment of polio that he founded.

On the morning of April 13, 1945, the President’s casket was carried to the railroad station at Warm Springs, accompanied by a procession of 2,000 soldiers from Fort Benning, Georgia.  Moving no faster than 35 miles per hour, the train passed through South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia.  All along the way sorrowful citizens turned out to pay their respects to the passing funeral train.  It arrived in Washington, DC on April 14th.  President Truman, members of the immediate family, and high-ranking government officials met the funeral train at Union Station.

Full military honors were rendered in the motorcade from the railroad station to the White House where the casket was placed in the East Room.  The Episcopal funeral service was conducted at 4:00 p.m.  That evening the casket was taken in a small procession of soldiers and police back to Union Station for the trip to Hyde Park, New York.  Again, mournful citizens turned out along the way to witness the passing train.

The morning of April 15th the funeral train arrived at a siding on the Hudson River four miles from the Roosevelt home.  The casket was transferred to a gun carriage and driven to the Roosevelt estate along a route lined with soldiers, sailors, and marines.  The caisson was preceded by a military band and a battalion of West Point cadets and followed by limousines containing President Truman and the Roosevelt family.  Full Military honors were rendered from the train to the burial site.  Hundreds of people young and old traveled to Hyde Park to attend the funeral. 

Interment was in the Rose Garden at the estate in Hyde Park. The rector of St. James Episcopal Church read the burial services.  Three volleys were fired over the grave, and taps were sounded as the casket was lowered into its final resting place.

President Roosevelt’s grave in Hyde Park is open to the public. It is located at the Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site on the grounds between his former house and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum.

Source: Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum

Suzy Brown, Director of the Visitor Experience, came directly from the 9/11 Memorial where she was responsible for opening and managing operations of the Memorial Preview Site and Visitor Center, and developing the Memorial’s retail operation.  For the High Line, Suzy developed the opening season Greeter’s Program, recruited and supervised a 60 person volunteer and docent corps, as well as the High Line Ranger program of 30 paid staff.  Prior to the High Line, Suzy managed all aspects of Visitor Service operations, including retail, private events, facilitating of public programming and security at Wave Hill, a public garden in the Bronx.

Alexander Mezzatesta, Park Operations Manager, came from New York City’s Parks Department where he directed operation and maintenance of 113 park properties throughout Brooklyn.  Alex supervised a staff of 80, a fleet of 20 vehicles (and 20 comfort stations).  As Manager, Alex coordinated closely with community boards and park conservancies and supervised scores of volunteers.  Alex is Four Freedoms Park’s on-site manager supervising all aspects of operation and maintenance through the Park Rangers, maintenance personnel, and volunteers.

On Tuesday, Four Freedoms Park attended FRIENDS of the Upper East Side Historic Districs' 30th Annual Meeting & Awards Ceremony at the Park Avenue Armory. Carter Wiseman presented us with the Distinctive Achievement Award. We're thrilled and honored to have received such an award!

Here are Carter Wiseman's beautiful words he shared before presenting the award..

While I was working on my biography of Louis Kahn, which was published in 2007, several people asked me if I was going to write about the architect's many unexecuted projects, including his memorial to Franklin Roosevelt, here in New York. I said no. I rather breezily explained my feelings at the time that works of architecture that are finished by others after the designer's death usually betray the original idea in some way. How wrong I was!

The structure that we are honoring today on Roosevelt Island is, I think, one of Kahn's finest works. Although designed more than 40 years ago, and since refined in minor ways, it is nevertheless a distillation of what I feel is best about Kahn's architecture. Indeed, it is as if Kahn had returned to us with an urgent message during our current period of architectural disarray, with its focus on marquee names over substance. The message is about architecture's essential values: the respect for site, the honor due to enduring materials, the potential of monumentality, the importance of historical resonance, and--above all--the power of simple forms inspired by deeply felt emotions.

One of Kahn's former associates told me while I was working on my book that, "For Lou, every building was a temple." This architect said that Kahn considered his Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California to be a temple for science, that the assembly building in Bangladesh was a temple for government, and that at the Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire was a temple for learning.

As you know, Kahn emigrated as a child from Estonia, a country then ruled by Russian czars, and came of age artistically in this country during a time of economic depression and a world war against totalitarianism. I think it is not too much to consider the Roosevelt memorial to be Kahn's temple for freedom. I can imagine no better finale to the career of one of history's great architects. New York--a city Kahn always felt was overly concerned with money and power compared to his adopted Philadelphia--is especially blessed to have such a place of worship.

The feeling seems to extend beyond our own species. Gina Pollara, the indomitable Executive Director of the Four Freedoms project, told me about a stange event. It seemed that during construction, a Harbor Seal took up residence on the little rock outcropping just south of Roosevelt Island, as if to monitor the progress of the work. The seal was there long enough for the construction crew to discuss giving the visitor a name. One option was "Frank," for Roosevelt. The other was "Lou." A vote was taken. Lou won.

The seal has gone, but the spirits of both Frank and Lou are with us for keeps, and joined in a place of special beauty.

Below is an aerial photograph of Roosevelt Island taken circa 1987. Back then, the southern tip's elevation was then nearly at sea level. (In the 1950s and 60s the elevation of the southern tip grew as New York City landfill was deposited there.) The image also shows the working Delacorte Geyser and the City Hospital! The Island is always changing. Next development: Cornell!

Fireside Chats: Leading a Nation in Crisis by Ambassador William J. vanden Heuvel on The Huffington Post.

"During the years of the Depression as a small boy I remember sitting in the living room with my parents... There was a solemnity as the radio was turned on and the announcer spoke the simple words: the President of the United States. And then came the strong, confident, softly powerful voice." -Ambassador William J. vanden Heuvel

Listen to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's first Fireside Chat on the banking crisis here.

At 1 pm, grasping the right arm of his son, James, Franklin Roosevelt "walked" slowly to the rostrum of the Capital to take the oath of office as 32nd President of the United States. His inaugural speech took 15 minutes. None who heard it would ever forget it. With a strong, unwavering voice, President Roosevelt dismissed "the money changers" whose greed had spoiled "the Temples of our civilization." He promised that the Great Depression which had convulsed the world would be defeated, and that "this great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper."

And then came the words that rivaled any spoken in our history in affecting the soul and spirit of America:

"...So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance..."

In that moment, the diversity of America united in common purpose. The new President's first act was to close the banks as he confronted the collapse of the financial system. He called the Congress into emergency session. For the next 100 days, Americans watched the miracle of democracy legislate a constitutional revolution directed to the building of a just society where the welfare of all citizens would be our government's concern. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected four times as our President.

Ambassador William J. vanden Heuvel

Learn more about President Roosevelt's first inauguration and explore the history surrounding this important event: fdr4freedoms digital resource.

“We are honored by such prestigious recognitions of this enduring memorial to President Roosevelt and the Four Freedoms. We thank the Municipal Art Society and Travel + Leisure Magazine for recognizing FDR Four Freedoms Park as a design that reflects the essence of New York City and a public space of international distinction,” said Ambassador William vanden Heuvel, Chairman of Four Freedoms Park Conservancy. “We hope that the public will take the time to visit the site and experience firsthand the remarkable beauty and originality in Louis I. Kahn’s design.”

The Park is open for visitors during the winter from Thursday through Sunday, from 9 AM - 5 PM.    

About the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park
The Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park is the only memorial dedicated to the former President in his home state of New York. Located on a triangular four-acre plot on the southern tip of Roosevelt Island in the East River in the heart of New York City, the Park includes walkways lined with trees, a bust of President Roosevelt created by artist Jo Davidson, and a granite monument symbolizing the “Four Freedoms” described in his historic January 6, 1941 State of the Union speech: freedom of speech and expression; freedom of religion; freedom from want; and freedom from fear. First envisioned in 1973 by the late Governor Nelson Rockefeller and other visionary urban planners, the monument’s design was the last work of the late Louis I. Kahn, one of the iconic architects of the 20th century. With its official opening on October 17th 2012, governance of the Park transitioned to the newly formed Four Freedoms Park Conservancy. For more information on FDR Four Freedoms Park, please visit: www.fdrfourfreedomspark.org.

NEW YORK, NY: February 19, 2013—Esteemed architect Louis Kahn will receive, posthumously, the Municipal Art Society’s 25th Brendan Gill Prize in recognition of his magnificent conception and design of FDR Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island.

FDR Four Freedoms Park, designed by Kahn in 1974, the year of his death, was opened in October 2012. The park was realized with the help of Ambassador William J. vanden Heuvel, Chairman of the Four Freedoms Park Conservancy, whose dedication guided the project for three decades and who raised the funds to construct the memorial and to endow its stewardship for years to come; Architect and Executive Director Gina Pollara who passionately understood Kahn’s vision and supervised construction; and Sally Minard, President of Four Freedoms Park Conservancy, which will ensure the maintenance of this great public space.

Said MAS President Vin Cipolla, “This visionary transformation of the southern tip of Roosevelt Island into a triumphant regional park by one of America’s most preeminent architects reconnects thousands of city dwellers and tourists to the birth of nations and the wider view of world history that sustains our present. MAS is pleased to be honoring and celebrating such an exceptional contribution to our city.”

“It is an honor to have Louis Kahn’s architectural design recognized by the Municipal Art Society with its prestigious Brendan Gill Prize,” said vanden Heuvel. “We are delighted that this memorial, built in honor of President Roosevelt and the Four Freedoms, has been distinguished as a design that reflects the essence of New York City. We want to thank the Municipal Art Society for including the Park in a long line of extraordinary works honored with the Brendan Gill Prize.”

A memorial to Franklin Delano Roosevelt filling four acres, the park is named after the four essential freedoms Roosevelt spoke of in his 1941 State of the Union address: Freedom of Speech and Expression; Freedom of Worship; Freedom from Want and Freedom from Fear.
These Four Freedoms are carved in granite in the park and referenced more abstractly in the design.

The memorial consists of monumental stairs leading to a central rectangular shaped lawn that appears triangular from different vistas. Littleleaf Linden trees flank the lawn and lead to the “room” – 60 -foot square plaza whose walls are comprised 36-tons of North Carolina granite blocks. On either side of the memorial, granite embankments drop to promenades. A bronze bust of the President, an enlargement of a sculpture by the renowned artist Jo Davidson, is a focal point of the Park. Across the river is the United Nations, a testament to President Roosevelt as its founding father.

The Brendan Gill Prize is an annual cash award given to the creator of a work of art made during the previous year that captures the energy and spirit of New York City. The FDR Four Freedoms Park Conservancy will use the cash prize to maintain the park.

The prize is named for longtime New Yorker theater and architecture critic, champion preservationist and former MAS chairman Brendan Gill.  A man of extraordinary intelligence and wit, Gill shared his remarkable talents with New York City and with MAS until his death in 1998. The prize was established in his honor in 1987 by his friend and fellow MAS board member Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis along with board members Helen Tucker and Margot Wellington. Ms. Tucker continues to serve on the jury along with Randall Bourscheidt, Kathryn Chenault, Heidi Ettinger, Tom Finkelpearl, Gail Gregg, Paul Gunther, John Haworth, Suketu Mehta and Vin Cipolla.

Recent prize recipients include musician Sufjan Stevens, artists Mike and Doug Starn, John Morse, Jeanne-Claude and Christo, and actress Sarah Jones.

Ambassador William J. vanden Heuvel will accept the prize on behalf of Louis Kahn and FDR Four Freedoms Park on Tuesday, February 26, at the MAS Annual Meeting. Media coverage is invited.

The Municipal Art Society of New York has led New York City’s livability movement since 1893. MAS’s mission is to advocate for public policies, private sector practices, individual agency and community engagement for a resilient built environment that encourages our city’s economic vitality, cultural vibrancy, environmental sustainability and social diversity. For more information visit MAS.org.  

CONTACT
Hazel Balaban
hbalaban@mas.org
212.935.3960 ext. 1227

Born in 1921 and brought up in Manhattan in a middle class family on the Upper West side, Ada Louise Huxtable experienced a New York that was of a very different character from that which emerged, piece by piece, in the decade that followed the end of the New Deal in the mid-50’s. As a child and teenager she was deeply affected by the Beaux Arts institutions of the city, the National History and Metropolitan Museums and the New York Public Library in particular, not only by virtue of their cultural content but also by their precisely crafted and well-proportioned civic tenor, which, along with the earliest Art Deco skyscrapers, constituted her formative impressions of the city during her teens.

Attracted like many other cultivated and urbane New Yorkers by the ameliorative promise of the Modern Movement to which Frank Lloyd Wright had made a formative contribution at the beginning of the century, Ada Louise elected to study art history at New York University before joining the staff of the Museum of Modern Art as a curatorial assistant. At that time she seemed to have believed unequivocally in the promise of modernism, as we may judge from the enthusiasm with which she assisted Philip Johnson in the mounting of the first MoMA retrospective exhibition on the work of Mies van der Rohe in 1963. She was by now in her early 40’s and it was surely this exhibition that brought her to the attention of the New York Times where she would serve as its architectural critic from 1963 to 1982, writing virtually every week to become one of the longest running architectural critics who was writing regularly in a major national newspaper with the single exception perhaps of Bruno Zevi’s column in L’Espresso. Such service earned her the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 1970 and a seat on the editorial board of the New York Times from 1973 to 1981.

She was in many respects the most singularly detached, accessible, yet passionately caring critic of her generation. Painstakingly well-informed and rigorously perceptive, she wrote of the on-going built environment without ever indulging in gratuitous ad hominems attacks or falling into the all-too-common fatal flaws of provincialism and pretension. She applied much of her critical intellect to castigating the somnambulant piecemeal destruction of Manhattan through a combination of bureaucratic corruption and ruthless speculation, aided and abetted by the fatal combination of venal developers and mediocre architects.

Now on the occasion of her passing on January 7th 2013, one is left with the uncomfortable feeling that she was never sufficiently recognized by the architects and architectural critics of my generation. Throughout my career she was most generous to me in every respect and now when, all too belatedly, one looks back over the total body of her production, one comes to realize what a magnum opus it is. Her writing surely stands out today as an ethical and political legacy, testifying to another more democratic America, which now seems to be devolving both economically and otherwise as the United States enters upon the inevitability of its imperial decline.

Kenneth Frampton, Ware Professor of Architecture, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University.

Ada Louise Huxtable wrote an obituary to Louis Kahn, after his death in 1974, titled "The Meaning of a Wall." Read the obituary here. 

"It is glorious to have one's birthday associated with a work like this. One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. And that kinship, which human suffering evokes, is perhaps the closest of all, for we know that those who work to help the suffering find true spiritual fellowship in that labor of love."

-Franklin D. Roosevelt, Radio Address for the Birthday Ball, January 30, 1940.

Poster for The President Hotel's birthday ball "so we may dance again" to raise funds in support of the fight to cure infantile paralysis.

Birthday Balls were fundraisers held across the country on President Roosevelt’s birthday, where the attendees were to “dance so that others may walk.” The first celebration was in 1934, where over one million dollars was raised for the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation, a therapeutic rehabilitation center that FDR created for polio patients.

January 30, 1937, President Roosevelt delivered a powerful second inaugural address. Four years prior, in 1932 he inherited a country on the brink of financial collapse, however, post-election he was not yet granted authority to influence events until inauguration day. During this period he experienced the difference those four months could have made, as the banking system collapsed and the Depression got worse. Immediately, Roosevelt pushed through the 20th Amendment to the US Constitution, which changed the presidential and legislative inauguration dates from March to January. This new legislation however, did not go into effect until his second inauguration, January 20, 1937. Roosevelt was the first president to be inaugurated on this day.

President Roosevelt's second inaugural address is a memorable speech. It voiced the expanding role that the government would take in American's lives.

Roosevelt aimed to mobilize the country, and the government, to overcome problems that seemed impossible to overcome.  He stated: "We of the Republic sensed the truth that democratic government has innate capacity to protect its people against disasters once considered inevitable, to solve problems once considered unsolvable. We would not admit that we could not find a way to master economic epidemics just as, after centuries of fatalistic suffering, we had found a way to master epidemics of disease. We refused to leave the problems of our common welfare to be solved by the winds of chance and the hurricanes of disaster."

Roosevelt saw that the progress this government made would be measured not by whether it added "more to the abundance of those who [had] much" but if it could "provide enough for those who [had] too little."

Listen to an excerpt of the speech here.... And be sure to share your favorite presidential inauguration moment with us!

“In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression… The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way… The third is freedom from want… The fourth is freedom from fear… That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation.” – President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Annual Message to Congress on the State of the Union, January 6, 1941

Following years of work already invested in fighting this cause, 75 years ago on January 3, 1938, President Roosevelt created the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, more commonly known as the March of Dimes Foundation. “March of Dimes” was a phrase coined by comedian Eddie Cantor who was instrumental in promoting the “birthday balls.” These celebrations were fundraisers held across the country on President Roosevelt’s birthday, January 30, where the attendees were to “dance so that others may walk.” The first birthday ball was held January 30, 1934, before FDR founded the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis.

The first March of Dimes radio appeal took place a week before FDR's birthday in 1938, and every American was asked to help fight this disease by contributing one dime or a few dimes. Eddie Cantor spoke out in support of President Roosevelt’s vision to unite in defeating this disease, “The March of Dimes will enable all persons, even the children, to show our President that they are with him in this battle against the disease. Nearly everyone can send in a dime, or several dimes. However, it takes only ten dimes to make a dollar and if a million people send only one dime the total will be $100,000.”

This was the start of a very powerful and empowering tradition – within a week 2,680,000 dimes were mailed to the White House, totaling $268,000. With the money raised by the March of Dimes campaign, Jonas Salk was commissioned to develop a polio vaccine and in June 1960, March of Dimes helped fund the Salk Instutute for Biological Studies, designed by Louis I. Kahn.

We would like to wish everyone a Happy Holiday and a very KAHNconstructive New Year!

Thank you to our entire community of supporters for helping us make this Park come to life, we could not have done it without you.

Normal Park hours will be in effect this holiday season: Thursday - Sunday, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. Park will be closed Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Years Eve, New Years Day.

“Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home – so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighbourhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerned citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.”

- Eleanor Roosevelt, “In Our Hands” (1958 speech delivered on the 10th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

In early October, we heard about an amazing 5th grade class from Park Slope Brooklyn. Their teacher, Jane Cyphers, teaches lessons on the Roosevelt presidency and the Four Freedoms speech. Each student then responds in a short essay. This year we were eager to hear their thoughts!

Mrs. Cyphers shared their essays and we were so impressed by each student's words. (We even invited one of the students to attend the October Dedication, find the story here.) This week, we invited the class the the Memorial.

They climbed the monumental stairs, took photographs in front of the bust and spent time in the Room. They even bumped into Gina Pollara, Executive Director, who explained to them the Louis Kahn design and the history of the Jo Davidson bronze bust.

We're going to invite them to come again in the Spring.

100 trained stone setters from Port Morris Tille & Marble.

261,000 hand-placed cobbles throughout the Park.

190 individual stones make up the Room.

70 of the 190 stones that make up the Room are monumental in size.

1-inch wide slots between each stone column in the Room.

12,100 tons (roughly 24 million pounds) of dimensional granite quarried in Mount Airy, North Carolina, at the North Carolina Granite Corporation.

Solid granite blocks of the Room measure 6 by 6 by 12 feet and weigh 36 tons.

“I became totally immersed in the life and landscape of FDR – looking for references to the Four Freedoms. Visiting Hyde Park was a revelation to me. Growing up in such a deeply nurturing environment must have infused the President with the principles that freedom from want and fear are essential human rights and how blessed we are to have freedoms of speech and religion as well."

These first eight monoprints are an homage both to FDR’s grand idea and Louis Kahn’s dream of honoring him.

Purchase prints from VanDeb Editions here. 20% of profits go to Four Freedoms Park Conservancy.

Architect Louis I. Kahn speaks very beautifully about nature and its interaction with architecture.

Design is a circumstantial act. It is a battle with our human nature, with the nature of nature, with the laws of nature, with the rules of man, and with principles. One must see all this to put it into being. Design is a material thing. It makes dimensions. It makes sizes. Form is a realization of the difference between one thing and another, a realization of what characterizes it. Form is not a design; it is not a shape, not a dimension. It is a material thing.

-Louis I. Kahn

Days before the big event, we got a chance to read each student's essay. We were very impressed! Each essay had bold visions for how the four freedoms could reach more world citizens. Some were funny, others sad, but all were very thoughtful. One essay in particular stood out, written by 10-year-old Sebastian Bobé; Sebastian wrote about the important role each freedom plays in empowering and protecting our human race, “we need FDR’s Four Freedoms," he said "in order to keep balance in the world and in our home country.” He then defined each of the freedoms.

Freedom of speech and expression "means you have the right to seek, receive and share information and ideas…"

Freedom of worship "is about believing in any God you want without anyone telling you who you should worship…"

Freedom from want "makes sure that people’s basic needs are being met. An adequate standard of living is a basic human right and we as humans need to take care of each other…"

Freedom from fear "means that you are not allowed to physically hurt anyone and that no one is allowed to hurt you.”

We were so impressed and inspired by Sebastian’s words that we invited him to attend the Memorial's dedication ceremony. He got a chance to meet both President Clinton and Ambassador vanden Heuvel. He brought his essay to the dedication and handed President Clinton a copy who promised to read it that very day! And we know that, after reading it, he was as hopeful as we were about this young man and this fifth-grade class from Brooklyn.

He writes, "The park - a memorial to Franklin Delano Roosevelt - was conceived four decades ago. The visionary architect who designed it died in 1974. The site, a landfill along one of the more dramatic stretches of waterfront in New York City, remained a rubble heap while the project was left for dead."

It was architect Louis Kahn's vision of a tribute to America's transformative president.

Nearly 40 years later, FDR Four Freedoms Park is opening ready to open.

Read more on The Daily Beast's exclusive, insider's look at the stunning new memorial to Franklin D. Roosevelt.