Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, National Memorial in Southwest Washington D.C., United States.
The Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial is a national monument in Southwest Washington D.C. composed of four granite-walled outdoor rooms along the Tidal Basin. Each room represents one of the president's four terms and contains sculptures, waterfalls, and engraved texts that illustrate his political challenges and achievements.
Congress created a memorial commission in 1955, and after rejected designs by Pederson and Tilney and by Marcel Breuer, Lawrence Halprin won the competition in 1974. The memorial was dedicated on May 2, 1997, by President Bill Clinton. In January 2001 a bronze statue of Roosevelt in a wheelchair, funded by a group led by the National Organization on Disability, was placed near the entrance.
Twenty-one quotations from Roosevelt's speeches are carved into red granite walls, documenting his responses to the Great Depression and World War II. The words appear along the pathways and give insight into the language and thinking of a generation shaped by economic hardship and global conflict.
The site lies between the Jefferson Memorial and the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial and can be reached via the Federal Triangle or Smithsonian Metro stations. The open layout allows visitors to walk through the rooms at their own pace and pause at the sculptures and waterfalls.
The wheelchair statue near the entrance was installed in January 2001, not at the memorial's 1997 opening. A group led by the National Organization on Disability raised $1.65 million over two years to fund it. The main seated Roosevelt figure hides wheels behind the chair, visible only from behind.
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