"I Know What I Should Like"

"If any memorial is erected to me, I know exactly what I should like it to be," Franklin D. Roosevelt once remarked to a friend. "I should like it to consist of a block about the size of this [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 . . .' "

A group of friends and associates carried out Roosevelt's wish and installed a 3-ft. by 6-ft. block of marble, suitably inscribed, in front of the Archives building, which is about halfway between the White House and the Capitol. But in a city where the care and feeding of monuments is a serious industry, many felt that F.D.R. deserved a more lofty and visible memorial. And so, in 1955, in the noblest Washington tradition, Congress established a commission to do something. The main developments since:

1959. After four years of getting organized, the twelve-member Memorial Commission acquired a site, 27 acres in West Potomac Park, alongside the river, near the cherry trees and the Jefferson Memorial.

1960. The American Institute of Architects, which had been asked to help run a competition for a proper memorial, announced that the winner among 547 entries was an abstract grouping of large stone forms, designed by the firm of Pedersen & Tilney.

1962. After considerable soul searching, the commission formally accepted the design. But amid much public criticism of the "Instant Stonehenge," the Washington Commission of Fine Arts vetoed the choice. Congress passed a resolution ordering the Memorial Commission to do better.

1964. Pedersen & Tilney simplified its design. Both the Memorial Commission and the Fine Arts Commission approved the new version, but critics began calling it Son of Instant Stonehenge.

1965. The Pedersen & Tilney project was abandoned. The Memorial Commission sought a new architect.

1966. The commission announced it had assigned the task to Architect Marcel Breuer, a prominent member of the Bauhaus school.

1967. The commission approved Breuer's plan for a pinwheel of granite walls flanked by narrow pools.

1968. The Fine Arts Commission unanimously rejected the Breuer plan as too extreme an intrusion on the park.

1969. The Memorial Commission reduced the site for the F.D.R. monument from 27 acres to twelve.

1970. The commission decided to honor F.D.R. with a rose garden, but monument lovers objected that this would not be monumental enough.

1974. The commission found a new designer, Lawrence Halprin of San Francisco, who specializes in water fountains.

1975. The commission approved Halprin's plan for a zigzagging 14-ft. granite wall that would connect a series of fountains, plantings, sculptures and quotes from F.D.R.'s speeches.

1978. Halprin submitted his final design, and all commissions approved. Proposed cost: $23 million. Maintenance cost: $750,000 per year.

After three more years of delay in getting Congress to take action, the question now is whether a Congress besieged by cost cutters will finally vote millions of dollars for a wall and some fountains. An omen came last fall when Democratic Representative Dan Glickman of Kansas demanded (in vain) the cancellation of the $30,000 budgeted every year for the Roosevelt commission. Glickman professed himself an admirer of Roosevelt but complained that the commission had spent $510,000 in its 26-year existence and had very little to show for it. In fact, the $30,000 budget goes mainly to maintain a tiny office in an obscure corner of the House Annex, where the sole employee is gray-haired Dorothy Martin, a former aide to Commission Chairman Eugene Keogh. "We get some mail and some phone calls," she says.

Keogh, 74, a former New York Congressman, ruefully attributes the long delays to the fact that "there are more sleeping art experts in Washington than anybody dreamed of," but he hopes that Congress will finally vote the funds some time during this Roosevelt centennial year. Even so, he adds, "I don't envision we'll be able to move on construction until Oct. 1, 1983, at the earliest."

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