Four Freedoms Park

In 1970, the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute (then known as the Four Freedoms Foundation) initiated the planning of a memorial to FDR in New York. The Four Freedoms Foundation entered into discussions with city and state leaders, including Edward J. Logue, President of the Urban Development Corporation (UDC), which was planning a new, self-contained community on what was then called Welfare Island. As a result of those discussions, the site on the southern tip of Welfare Island was selected for the memorial and because the island was to contain this memorial, the island was renamed in honor of FDR on September 24, 1973. Naming the Island for Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first step in a project that was to culminate in the construction of the memorial on the southern tip.

After the groundbreaking in 2010, the Roosevelt Memorial will be completed in the Fall of 2012, nearly 40 years after initiating the plans.

More information on the Four Freedoms Park is availabe on the website Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park or you can read the speech by Ambassador Vanden Heuvel, delivered at a meeting of the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation Southpoint Development Advisory Committee, which was published as «A Glimmer of Hope for FDR Park at Southpoint,» in The Wire, March 7, 1998.