NY Times Writes A Commercial Advertisement For the Kahn/FDR Memorial

Image from NY Times

I have had a bad cold for the last couple of days but after Roosevelt Island 360 alerted me to this NY Times commercial, disguised as a news article on the Kahn/FDR memorial, I was forced to get out of my sick bed to respond. From the NY Times City Room blog:

Don’t doubt the power of documentary films.That is one lesson William J. vanden Heuvel, the lawyer, diplomat and businessman, has learned. He says that the long-delayed project to build a memorial to Franklin D. Roosevelt on the southern tip of Roosevelt Island — first proposed in 1973 — is finally moving forward in large part because of “My Architect,” a 2003 documentary by the son of the architect Louis I. Kahn.

Not a word in the article about opposition to the Kahn design by Roosevelt Island residents and others at all. I know that the NY Times has editorialized in favor of the Kahn/FDR memorial boondoggle but I would have thought that such an attitude would not have seeped into so-called "news" coverage.

Anyway here's my response from the NY Times comments page, #9.

The readers of the NY Times might be interested in knowing that there is significant opposition to the so called FDR memorial by residents of Roosevelt Island and other users of Southpoint Park, the proposed site. How can anyone object to a memorial designed by Louis Kahn to FDR? Simple, Mr. Kahn designed this memorial in the early 1970’s when Roosevelt Island was a very different place than it is now.

In 1973 there was no residential community on Roosevelt Island but now in the 21st century we are a neighborhood of approximately 12 thousand people and still growing with great need for park land, green space as well as open unobstructed waterfront views and access. Instead, what we get is the Kahn Memorial, and let’s not fool anyone it is the Kahn not the FDR memorial, with it’s concrete and granite replacing grass and open waterfront views. Amazingly, the design intentionally obstructs the existing panoramic 360 degree views of the NYC skyline and East River waterfront from Southpoint Park and the current architect and Kahn worshippers thinks that is a good thing.

In reality, the memorial is more to the architect Louis Kahn than to FDR. As the prominent art critic Thomas B. Hess, a self described friend of Kahn and admirer of Franklin Roosevelt said of this design:

“This is the sort of political edifice that the Italian fascists loved and Speer perfected for the glory of the Third Reich… The site itself is treated heartlessly. What was a modest, picturesquely rugged shoreline has been disciplined to straight lines and symetrical angles that have no significance beyond the alarming one of man’s ability to impose a meaningless geometry on nature. The ultimate irony is that Roosevelt, who fought totalitarians to the death, is commemorated in the harsh style propogated by the dictators.”

That hardly sounds like a memorial to the values that FDR represented, does it?

The sponsors of this memorial, FERI, have a 35 year record of failure to raise funds, missed deadlines and broken promises for this project and are now seeking at least $20 million in taxpayer funds for this vanity project. Surely, in these times of fiscal crisis and budget cuts, New York City and State funds could be better spent keeping libraries open, schools funded, garbage picked up, police on the street, fire department protecting us etc.

I am astounded that politicians like City Council Member Lappin prioritizes spending 4 million dollars in City Council funding for this very controversial memorial over the future needs of essential services to the citizens of New York City. Perhaps her colleagues at the City Council will examine this budget allocation more closely when essential services for their constituents are being cut but this boondoggle receives $4 million.

Wouldn’t it be a better to have a great landscape architectural competition for this fantastic site, for which the outmoded 1970’s Kahn design can compete, together with new 21st century plans, to determine the most suitable outcome for Southpoint Park? Of course FERI will never agree to this because they know that their proposal would never be selected in a fair competition for a 21st century Southpoint Park waterfront park.

What Roosevelt Island’s should have at this site is a real waterfront park, not the Kahn Memorial.

For anyone interested below is a link to more information on why the Louis Kahn designed FDR memorial is a bad idea for Roosevelt Island and the City of New York.

— Posted by Roosevelt islander

Back to bed.

UPDATE - 6:30 PM - The webcast of the 9/11 RIOC Board meeting that approved conditional site control of the southern portion of Southpoint Park for the Kahn/FDR memorial to FERI is available here. It is the first new item on the agenda. Watch and see how decisions get made on Roosevelt Island. Note that no opponents of the Kahn memorial were allowed to speak.