A Tour of the Four Freedoms Memorial in New York City

WMF staff in New York visited the Four Freedoms Memorial on Roosevelt Island in New York City in advance of its opening to the public in October. We were given the tour by Gina Pollara, Executive Director of the Four Freedoms Park and one of the people who worked tirelessly for years to see Louis Kahn’s vision for this space realized nearly 40 years after it was conceived.

To reach the memorial, you pass the dramatic ruins of a nineteenth-century smallpox hospital designed by James Renwick, Jr. In the future, this may become the visitor information center for visitors to the memorial, but at the moment work is focused on stabilizing the roofless shell. Louis Kahn’s memorial is located immediately to the south of the ruin, a dramatic sight with five copper beech trees demarcating the old and new stone structures. Beyond the trees rise the memorial steps and, once you reach the top, a long, tree-lined lawn slopes toward a monumental head of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. On the other side of the blocks holding the sculpture is an inscription, an excerpt from Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms speech, delivered on January 6, 1941. The granite blocks inscribed with the speech create the northern wall of a space known as the room, a three-sided roofless space that overlooks the East River to the south. Off to the right is the United Nations, which adopted Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms in their 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

It was an honor and a pleasure to see have this exclusive preview of this memorial, Louis Kahn’s only structure in New York City. It is sure to become a major landmark in the city.