Memorializing Theodore Roosevelt

By the start of the 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt Island had fallen into dereliction and neglect. Although abandoned by many of the organizations who used it in the decades prior, and frequented only by squatters, the federal government proposed buying the island in 1902 to serve as a connecting point between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington House. These plans were never acted on though, and the government did not purchase the island until later. Other plans by speculative real estate developers for the island at this time included amusement parks, apartments, a university stadium, and a new jail and workhouse. In 1913 the Washington Gas Light Company purchased the island and was planning to use the island for the construction of a new gasworks. These plans were never acted upon though, with the company retaining the unused island for 17 years.

 

Mason House Ca. 1905

Library of Congress

In 1927 the federal government began to fear that the company might finally begin construction on a gasworks at the island which would have had an impact on the newly proposed Monument Core for the National Mall. In 1931 the Roosevelt Memorial Association began to develop plans for the construction of a memorial for Theodore Roosevelt. One such location proposed for this memorial was along the Tidal Basin, but that location had already been set aside for the Jefferson Memorial. This left Analostan Island as a prime location for the placement of this memorial.

In 1932 the Roosevelt Memorial Association purchased the island from the Washington Gas Light Company. The association would turn the island over to the federal government later that same year, beginning the process of transforming the island into its current state as Theodore Roosevelt Island.

The association felt that the island’s character as an overgrown and wild place matched the character of “Roosevelt the rugged outdoorsman.” [1] They advocated that when the memorial be built, the wild nature of the island be preserved as a place of sanctuary from the modern world. In 1932 the island was renamed one final time as Theodore Roosevelt Island and planning began for how the memorial would take shape. The Association hired notable landscape architects the Olmsted brothers, to redesign the island. The Olmsteds’ plans maintained that the island should be kept wooded and covered in native vegetation to meet the goals of the memorial as a natural sanctuary from the modern world.

 

Frederick Law Olmsted

The father of the Olmsted brothers was Frederick Law Olmsted, a landscape architect most notably known for designing Central Park in New York City. Frederick Law Olmsted also designed the grounds of the United States Capitol, the Biltmore Estate, and Jackson Park in Chicago as part of the World’s Columbia Exposition of 1893. As well as being a landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted was a staunch abolitionist before the Civil War. [2]

 

Sources:

1. Alan Having, “Presidential Images, History, and Homage: Memorializing Theodore Roosevelt, 1919-1967,” American Quarterly 30, no. 4 (1978): 514–532.

2. Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States: With Remarks on their Economy (New York: Dix & Edwards, 1856).