Franklin D. Roosevelt Cenotaph Memorial – Washington DC

Description

In 1965, a small cenotaph memorial to President Franklin Roosevelt was placed in front of the National Archives, at the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 9th Street, NW.  It is made of marble and from the same rock quarry that was used for the president’s grave at Hyde Park, New York.

According to a blog of the National Archives, FDR had wanted any memorial in his honor to be simple, telling Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter: “If any memorial is erected to me, I know exactly what I should like it to be. I should like it to consist of a block about the size of this (putting his hand on his desk) and placed in the center of that green plot in front of the Archives Building. I don’t care what it is made of, whether limestone or granite or whatnot, but I want it plain without any ornamentation, with the simple carving, ‘In Memory of ____’.”

In 1997, a much larger FDR Memorial opened in the West Potomac Park area of Washington, DC.