Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park

Linley GreenLA 5261: History of Landscape Design

October 1, 2018

Sketch by Louis I. Kahn. Image Courtesy of the Louis I. Kahn Collection, University of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.

The LandscapeFranklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms ParkLocation: Roosevelt Island, New York, NY

Designer: Louis I. Kahn (1973), Mitchell/Giurgola Architects (2010)

Sponsors: The City of New York and New York State

• Originally envisioned in the early 1970s by NYC Mayor John V. Lindsay and Edward J. Logue, urban planner and head of the NYS Urban Development Corporation under Governor Rockefeller.

• Former US ambassador William J. vanden Heuvel garnered support and helped secure funding for the actual construction of the project in the early 2000s.

Dates of Construction: 2010 – 2012. Opened to the public on October 24, 2012.

Purpose of Design: The park was designed as a tribute to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his Four Freedoms speech given in 1941. The park was also part of a larger urban renewal project designed by Logue for what was then called Welfare Island.

Photograph by Raymond Meier for Vanity Fair.

The Designer

Louis I. Kahn (1901-1974)• Louis Kahn was one of the preeminent American

architects of the 20th century, known for monumental works such as the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla.

• Kahn spent the early years of his career working on government housing projects under FDR’s New Deal and had great reverence for the president.

• He was a communitarian and strongly believed in architecture’s ability to inspire democratic participation.

• He was a proponent of structural rationalism and transcendent order, which he saw in the Platonic geometries found in nature.

Louis I. Kahn. Photo courtesy of Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park’s website.

"I had this thought that a memorial should be a room and a garden. That’s all I had. Why did I want a room and a garden? I just chose it to be the point of departure. The garden is somehow a personal nature, a personal kind of control of nature, a gathering of nature. And the room was the beginning of architecture… the room wasn’t just architecture, but was an extension of self.”

– Louis I. Kahn, 1973

Historical Influences – The Outdoor RoomKahn’s desire to marry the controlled natural setting of the garden and the personal aspect of the room harkens back to the peristyle gardens that served as outdoor rooms in the villas of wealthy Greeks and Romans. Four Freedoms Park is a public space but the enclosure of the granite blocks, the space’s relatively small scale, and its separation from the nearby city create an intimate setting for contemplation and reflection.

Looking south at “The Room” and Jo Davidson’s bust of FDR. Photo by Ty Cole for dezeen.com.

The rear peristyle garden at the House of Pansa, Pompeii, 2nd century BCE.Photo from Landscape Design: A Cultural and Architectural History

by Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, p. 83.

Historical Influences – The MonumentalThe sloped lawn that guides visitors to “The Room” at the end of the park echoes the processional axis of Egyptian temples and creates a similar ritualistic approach, while Kahn’s use of enormous blocks of granite give the space an equally palpable sense of gravity and significance.

Twenty-eight blocks of North Carolina granite, each weighing thirty-six tons, make up “The Room” at the southern tip of the park. Excerpts from FDR’s speech are etched into the center block like hieroglyphs.Photo by Ty Cole for dezeen.com.

Temples of Mentuhotep II and Queen Hatshepsut, Deir el-Bahri, Egypt.Photo from Landscape Design: A Cultural and Architectural History by Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, p. 40.

The classic allées of formal French gardens, such as those at Chantilly, are given a modern interpretation in Kahn’s design. Rather than running parallel to one another, the two allées of little-leaf lindens are angled inward as they follow the tapered lawn to create a forced perspective. The farthest trees frame sculptor Jo Davidson’s enormous bust of President Roosevelt.

Historical Influences - The Allée

The two allées are comprised of 120 little-leaf linden trees. Personal photograph.One of two “Allées des Philosophes” in André Le Nôtre’s gardens at Chantilly. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Sources

• Colquhoun, Alan. Modern Architecture. Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 248-254.

• Dunlap, David W. “Edward Logue, Visionary City Planner, Is Remembered.” The New York Times, 23 April 2000, https://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/23/nyregion/edward-logue-visionary-city-planner-is-remembered.html.

• Four Freedoms Park Conservancy. “Louis Kahn,” FDRFourFreedomsPark.org, 24 Sept. 2018, https://www.fdrfourfreedomspark.org/louis-kahn/.

• Frearson, Amy. “Four Freedoms Park by Louis Kahn.” Dezeen, 25 Jan. 2013, https://www.dezeen.com/2013/01/25/four-freedoms-park-by-louis-kahn/.

• Kimmelman, Michael. “Decades Later, a Vision Survives.” The New York Times, 12 Sept. 2012, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/13/arts/design/louis-kahns-franklin-d-roosevelt-four-freedoms-park-to-open.html.

• Rogers, Elizabeth Barlow. Landscape Design: A Cultural and Architectural History. Henry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 2001, pp. 40 & 83.

• Tyrnauer, Matt. “Hyde Park on the East River.” Vanity Fair, 19 October 2012, https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/11/architecture-fdr-memorial-louis-i-kahn.