Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial Case Study

To add an additional layer of complications to the Franklin Roosevelt Memorial, it is in the nation’s capital. Washington D.C. has been a unique city since its inception. It was designed to be the nation’s capital, because of this most decisions about the appearance of the city have been carefully overseen by the federal government. The city is like a book, and every building, memorial, and monument are pages describing parts of American life in past, present, and future. The government wants to protect and control the story that the city tells. Every presidential memorial in Washington D.C. has had a commission established by Congress, that oversees the design and construction of the monument. In 1955 the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial Commission was started “for the purpose of formulating plans for the design, construction, and location of a permanent memorial to FDR in the city of Washington.” Choosing a design for the memorial would be tricky. The design had to be approved by the Memorial Commission, Congress, the Commission of Fine Arts, the National Capital Planning Commission, and of course, the society which included …show more content…
Roosevelt Memorial is in interesting case study dealing with canon and authority. It conveys the role that monuments, as part of the American story, can play in appeals to society by people who hold power. The way in which society chooses to engage with memorial and monuments can ultimately change that society. A society assign creditability to a memorial or monument as part of that society’s national narrative, which aids in upholding the memorial or monuments ability to appeal to current day values and mores that authority figures promote to maintain the system that gives them power. Those authority figures cannot alter current day values or mores without societies approval, but they cannot gain societies approval without appealing to current day values and mores. That is the endless cycle that shapes the society we live