A New Wrinkle In Roosevelt Island FDR Memorial Controversy - FERI Altered Louis Kahn's Final Design For Memorial

Click on Image to see two FDR Sculptures in Final Kahn FDR Memorial Design

A new wrinkle has popped up in the Louis Kahn/FDR Memorial controversy the night before RIOC is scheduled to vote on whether or not to approve the project. To date, the Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt Institute (FERI) has always maintained that no changes can be made to the Louis Kahn design of the FDR Memorial. However, Mark Diamond, a Roosevelt Island resident and architect has done some research and discovered that FERI's plan for the FDR Memorial is itself different from Louis Kahn's final design. In a letter to the RIOC Board Mr. Diamond writes:

As an architect, I wish to express my concern about the plan that the Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt Institute has submitted to you for approval. It is inconsistent with Louis I. Kahn's final design for the FDR Memorial. That design includes two sculptures. One is located outside the open-roofed room. The second is inside the room. This second sculpture has been omitted in FERI's Plan.

Restoring the omitted sculpture would return the Memorial to Kahn's design and provide an opportunity to represent FDR's disability within Four Freedoms Park....

Mr. Diamonds full letter with images is embedded below.
FERIFDRMemorialInconsistentwithKahndesiign

UPDATE - 6/29 - During the June 25 RIOC Board Meeting, FERI representative Gina Pollara responded to Mr. Diamond's article by saying that the second statue was an earlier version eliminated during the final design stage of the Memorial and removed from the construction documents.

Mr. Diamond replies:

Like Gina, I had assumed that the two sculptures were in an earlier version of Kahn's design. I researched it in order to reference the sculptures for a non-newsworthy opinion I was preparing to send to the Board to express my support of RIDA's call to depict FDR's disability. It took much time to learn and confirm that two sculptures are in Kahn's final design, that the UDC approved that design, and Kahn was pleased with it. He died weeks later. Hence, my letter all of a sudden became substantive, delayed and delivered too late for proper consideration. Fortunately, the outcome was good.

Gina is correct that the second sculpture is not in the construction drawings, but those were drawn up after his death. The references in my letter clearly document that two sculptures are in Kahn's final design, not just in an earlier version. Among other evidence, there's Paul Goldberger in the New York Times describing two sculptures in an approved plan a month after Kahn died. Goldberger also notes that construction docs are yet to be drawn up. The post-Kahn architectural team may be able to tell us why one sculpture was removed from the design and clarify other important discrepancies.

I'm encouraged that the Ambassador said he will discuss my letter with their advisor, the architect James Polshek. I will follow through as well. I am thrilled that RIDA has won a pledge from the Ambassador to expend substantial funds to address FDR's disability at the Four Freedoms Park. And the community should be quite gratified that Patrick Stewart and David Kraut are committed to holding FERI to its pledges.

A webcast of the June 25 RIOC Board meeting should be available shortly.