8.20.12: Four Freedoms | New York Social Diary

Four Freedoms

Shoeless. 5:00. PM. Photo: JH.

Monday, August 20, 2012. A beautiful weekend in the quiet city, with temperatures ranging from the high 60s to the high 70s (midday). Little humidity, lots of sunshine; occasionally massive flotillas of clouds suggesting -- if not threatening -- raindrops, maybe storms. I’ve been slightly obsessed with these clouds in the past few weeks, as you may have noticed. I think it’s been my method for dealing with the seemingly relentless heat of this summer; a way of focusing on the possibility of relief.

Aside from that, many cloud formations have had a spectacularly ominous quality reminiscent of a J.M.W Turner painting, lending a momentousness to my little drammer about the city’s heat. Although rarely did even the darkest deliver the precipitation that the forecasters had led us to expect. Or, at least not much of it in Manhattan.

Looking southeast over Roosevelt Island, the (part) subject of today's Diary. Those apartment houses came only in the early 1970s when the island was renamed (for fifth or sixth time) and became a community for New Yorkers. This photo was taken in the late afternoon on a beautiful Saturday just past.

I love to watch the boats on the river. All of them appeal to me because I'm one of those people who gets a thrill in being on the water. This Coast Guard boat was heading north and the FDNY (grey and red) boat, heading south.

Officially luxury heading south.

View from the Promenade just in front of Gracie Mansion, the mayor's house where John Lindsay lived. The Gothic style lighthouse was constructed in 1872 by convicts then living in the penitentiary on the island. Known as the Blackwell Island light, 50 feet tall, now on the National Register of Historic Places.

Looking northeast from the same spot toward Astoria, Queens on the other side of Roosevelt Island, and the Triboro Bridges (now RFK) and the Metroliner tracks (the red span on the far left) that end up in Penn Station on 31st and Eighth Avenue.

Till the clouds roll by ...

The Promenade at about 89th Street, behind the flora and fauna on the right is Gracie Mansion.

Over on the West Side, looking north along the Hudson towards the 79th Street Boat Basin and George Washington Bridge.

Thursday morning I went over to Roosevelt Island to join Tobie (Mrs. Franklin Dr. Jr.) Roosevelt to see the almost finished Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park which will officially be completed and open to the public on October 24th.

The building of this great memorial of our 32nd President has largely been an effort spearheaded by William vanden Heuvel who can take credit for his indefatigable fund-raising to make it a reality ($54 million raised and needed at last count).

Mr. vanden Heuvel, a courtly, soft-spoken yet deliberate advocate of Mr. Roosevelt’s freedoms, has been a familiar figure on the civic and national scene for several decades now. A gentle gentleman, a New York attorney and author, an assistant to US Attorney General Robert Kennedy during the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, an early protégé of William (“Wild Bill”) Donovan, founder of the OSS which predated the CIA; a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Deputy Ambassador to the UN under Jimmy Carter, as well as an activist in many causes affecting judicial reform and human rights, he is Founder and Chairman Emeritus of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute.

Tobie, Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr., and William vanden Heuvel overlooking the then (June 2011) under-construction Four Freedoms Park.

I’ve been in his company and conversation to recognize The Character of the man which, in a word, is Dedication. To those things that count for all of us.

Roosevelt Island, as readers of the NYSD have seen in scores of photos I’ve taken of it while recording the weather of the day year round for the Diary, is a 147 acre, 2 mile-long, 800 feet wide strip in the middle of the tidal channel known as the East River, which has had a few names since the Dutch arrived to found New Amsterdam and purchased it – then known as Varckens Eylandt (Hog Island) – from the Canarsie Indians.

It has an interesting history since it was acquired by the first European settlers, and perhaps before. Prisons, hospitals, the impoverished, the criminal, the troubled, the diseased; an island of the desperate. That all changed radically, mind you, about forty years ago or so, but long after it had human elements of madness, murder and poverty.

The prison at Blackwell's Island, 1853, built in 1832.

New York City Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island.

A Map of Blackwell Island as it would have appeared in the 1880s.

When the British took over the area in 1666, they renamed it Manning’s Island after the British naval captain who seized it from the Dutch. Then Captain John Manning’s son-in-law Robert Blackwell became owner and renamed it after himself.

In 1796, 110 years later, Blackwell’s great-grandson built “Blackwell House” -- still standing and the sixth oldest house in the city. The city bought it 32 years later (1828) for $32,000 and put up a penitentiary. Then came the New York City Lunatic Asylum in 1839 and by the 1850s, a workhouse for petty violaters, and then a Smallpox Hospital, the ruins of which are now known as the Renwick Ruin. In 1872, at the northern tip of the island, convict labor built the Gothic style lighthouse (still standing). In 1921 it was renamed Welfare Island, an appropriate name for a tiny split of land bordered only by the rushing tides that served (or at least accommodated) the unfortunate. In 1952 the Bird S. Coler Hospital – a chronic care facility opened.

Aerial view of the southern tip of the island with construction having begun by the Frank Sciame Company, 2010. To the right across the water, the FDR Drive runs along the western shore beginning at 49th Street.

In 1968, the great Mayor John V. Lindsay had a better idea. Why that was is unknown to me, but at the time he was living at Gracie Mansion at the northern end of Carl Schurz Park in my neighborhood and overlooking the northern tip of the island (and the lighthouse). Perhaps he was inspired.

The following year, the New York State Urban Development Corporation signed a 99-year lease for the island. Mayor Lindsay appointed a Welfare Island Planning and Development Committee to study possible uses in redeveloping the island. They brought in Philip Johnson and John Burgee, the architects who created a plan for apartment buildings to be built for 20,000 residents.

President Franklin Roosevelt addressing Congress (January 6, 1941 State of the Union address) with what has become the "Four Freedoms" speech, proposing the four fundamental freedoms for people "everywhere in the world": 1. Freedom of Speech and expression; 2. Freedom of worship; 3. Freedom from want; 4. Freedom from fear.

Sculptor Jo Davidson with his bust of the President on the grounds of the White House, 1933.

Architect Louis I. Kahn, designer of the Four Freedoms Memorial.

Two years later the Four Freedoms Foundation (later renamed the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute) proposed using part of the island for a memorial to the late president and renaming the island. Two years later the distinguished architect Louis I. Kahn was commissioned to design the memorial on the southernmost three acres of the island. And the year after that, in 1973, it officially became Roosevelt Island, and there was the plan.

So. That was 39 years ago. Twenty years later Mr. vanden Heuvel and his merry bunch of citizens got the ball rolling. And almost twenty years after that, New Yorkers are about to have another wonderful park to visit. And this one is remarkable. As you can see, being there is like being on the prow of a great ship in the middle of this magnificent estuary heading out into the Atlantic and the world.

The park abuilding; getting there.

And there at the very tip of this symbolic ship is what Louis Kahn called “The Room” where resides sculptor Jo Davidson’s bust of Franklin D. Roosevelt, which he sculpted in 1933, the year Roosevelt was sworn in as President of a then tottering vessel called the United States.

Aside from the symbolism and the great artists’ contribution, what is most important about this new Park is its location in the midst the tidal forces of the great ocean. If you sit there amidst these forces and just keep your eyes open, Mother Nature will do the rest. It’s called Peace. Peace of Mind. And Spirit.

I took this photo under the 59th Street Bridge getting off the tram, which comes over from East 59th Street and Second Avenue. The greenery above and hanging over the Drive are the rear area of Sutton Place between 55th and 59th Street.

Looking southeast. That tall black vertical slab is the Trump Tower on 49th Street and First Avenue across from the United Nations complex.

Under the bridge, looking northwest. The riverside buildings just under the bridge are those of Rockefeller University and the New York Presbyterian Hospital complex.

I had no reason to take this photograph except I love the spire of the Chrysler Building peaking through all the way over on 42nd street and Lexington Avenue. The buildings along the river are the rear of First Avenue and Beekman Place (the lower buildings and the tall one in front of the twins (United Nations Plaza) and Mr. Trump's tower.

The lawn and the allees just north of the "The Room" at the Park. The construction above the building in the center is the bridge (Queensboro, 59th Street and now The Edward I. Koch) on the way to Long Island City.

Ahh, heavenly. Imagine sitting on a chair underneath lindens or a blanket spread out on the grass, where balmy breezes blow ...

Encore.

The walkway from The Room, looking northwest toward the bridge and the Con Edison Queens plant in the background.

Almost finished, looking from the FDR bust north.

The men laying the last of the cobblestones (250,000 in all) with the "Renwick Ruin" in the background.

I'll take Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island too.

FDR's neighbors, the cormorants waiting and working.

The white band in front of the UN Secretariat building is covering the renovation in process. Construction was begun 65 years ago in 1947 and completed five years later in 1952. Time for a lift.

The crew of Nicholas Benson, the man who created the font and designed the layout of the speech on the marble behind the bust.

Gina Pollara, one of the co-curators of the Kahn exhibition in 2006, and overseeing the man's work on this island with Tobie, Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr., who has played a major role in the process.

Nicholas Benson from Newport, Rhode Island, who has installed the Room and the handcarved speech.

Benson in front of his work.

The finished work.

The Jo Davidson bust of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Looking west for a close up of that famous sign that everyone who's ever ridden along the FDR knows.

On the left, the steps leading up to the Park directly across from Beekman Place (the low houses). The brick house on the far right -- almost directly above the left of the three men on the plaza -- was built by James Forrestal, the first Secretary of Defense (Truman's cabinet), who died in 1949. The house was later sold to the great American songwriter Irving Berlin, who occupied it until his death at 101 in 1989.

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