Memorial to F.D.R. May Finally Be Built

The Commission of Fine Arts has approved a $47-million memorial to former President Franklin D. Roosevelt, ending a quarter-century of controversy over the design and site of the monument.

Frances Campbell, executive director of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial Commission, said Friday that the arts panel’s vote in favor of a modified design by San Francisco landscape architect Lawrence Halprin will enable the memorial to be completed by 1995.

Halprin’s design calls for long walkways and shaded exterior rooms containing sculptures and inscriptions dealing with various aspects of Roosevelt’s four terms as President, from the Great Depression through World War II.

Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage in Warm Springs, Ga., on April 12, 1945.

The proposed memorial will have a “gardenesque quality,” with rough-hewn granite walls, fountains, pools and waterfalls. It will be in West Potomac Park, putting it within sight of the Potomac River and close to the southeastern edge of the Tidal Basin. The site is about 400 yards west of the Jefferson Memorial.

Efforts to build a suitable memorial to the nation’s 32nd President date to the 1950s. Two designs for abstract monuments were withdrawn in the 1960s after much criticism--one was denounced as “instant Stonehenge”--and the project languished for lack of money.

Congress appropriated $5.8 million last fall to begin construction on the condition that the fine arts commission take another look at Halprin’s design, which the panel originally approved in 1979.