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TIME: Almanac 1993
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TIME Almanac 1993.iso
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070990
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1992-08-28
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NATION, Page 31American NotesMEMORIALSA Monument to F.D.R.
Franklin D. Roosevelt once said he did not want any memorial
to him to be any larger than his Oval Office desk. In fact, an
inconspicuous block of marble about that size was erected in
front of the National Archives Building in Washington 20 years
after he died, in 1945. But as his place in history has grown,
so too has the demand for something grander. Next year ground
will at last be broken on a "gardenesque" layout of granite
walls and waterfalls near the Potomac River.
The procrastination has had less to do with political
attitudes toward F.D.R. than with bickering over the size of
the monument. The design by San Francisco landscape architect
Lawrence Halprin was finally approved by the Commission of Fine
Arts, which had accepted a larger version of the concept in
1978. It took a plea last fall by Florida Congressman Claude
Pepper, who had been a Senator when F.D.R. was President, to
get a $5.8 million appropriation passed to begin the $47
million project. Terminally ill with cancer, Pepper got out of
bed to make his pitch in his last public appearance before he
died at 88.