[2] In 2005, William J. vanden Heuvel, a former U.N. ambassador and a founder of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute, launched the effort to get the four-acre park built to Kahn's specifications, gathering more than $50 million in private and public funds.

[8] Earthwork for the future memorial was started in 1994 by Langan Engineering as part of a project to demolish the Delacorte Fountain and City Hospital.

[12] In 2006, ENYA (Emerging New York Architects) made the island's abandoned southern end the subject of one of its annual competitions.

Participants included former President Bill Clinton, Governor Andrew Cuomo, former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and relatives of Roosevelt.

[14] In June 2015, 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton chose the park site for her first major campaign rally.

I had this sense, you see, and the room wasn't just architecture, but was an extension of self.The four-acre (1.6 ha) park[19] stands at the southernmost point of Roosevelt Island.

[6] The memorial is a procession of elegant open-air spaces, culminating in a 3,600-square-foot (330 m2) plaza surrounded by 28 blocks of North Carolina granite, each weighing 36 tons.

[6] Excerpts from Roosevelt's Four Freedoms speech are carved on the walls of this room-like space, which is open to the sky above.

In contrast with the hard granite forms, Kahn placed five copper-beech trees at the memorial's entrance and 120 little-leaf lindens in allées leading up to the monument.