FDR Four Freedoms State Park is an extraordinarily serene place, a retreat from hectic urban living and working. But it’s also a place that demonstrates how American heroes have diminished. If our leadership looks smaller to you now, a new book fortifies that perception.

by David Stone

…after a generous tip from Sylvan Klein.

The Roosevelt Island Daily News

Heroes Contrast

“Kahn originally planned for the project to culminate with a “bastion,” a tall, temple-like outdoor room formed of 60-foot-tall, stainless-steel-clad concrete walls, looming over a statue of Roosevelt. The concept was later pared down to a 12-foot-tall, stone-clad room, with a bust of Roosevelt that is practically the same height as the walls,” Michael J. Lewis wrote in an introduction for a book about architect Lewis Kahn’s final year of sketches.

Louis Kahn, who gets credit for designing the park, imagined something grander, a salute to a hero credited with leading America out of the Great Depression and through World War II. Roosevelt Island was named after him, and he should have an appropriate memorial.

But time has done a deal on heroes. Either they don’t exist in America anymore or they’ve been rendered much smaller.

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• Shelton Haynes: Diversity Hero or Now Being Shown the Door?

Lewis Kahn’s Last Sketchbook

In 8 Revelations from Louis Kahn’s Last Sketchbook, the New York Times focuses on the legendary architect’s groundbreaking ideas – some of which, like the Roosevelt Island memorial park, finally got built decades later.

Kahn himself stands among heroes diminished. His design shrunk along with Roosevelt’s standing. Were it not for the efforts of William J. Vanden Heuvel, who persisted through decades, there would be no park today.

Now, after years of efforts, Kahn’s daughter Sue Ann published Louis I. Kahn: The Last Notebook with a Swiss Publisher, Lars Müller. The sketchbook was with him when he died tragically, at 73, of a heart attack in a restroom in Penn Station.

The carefully preserved documents shine a bright light on Kahn, even as it shows us how much we’ve lost since his death in 1974.

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