FDR's dorm room

[PaulC]

From 1900-1904, young Franklin Delano Roosevelt, with his Groton chum Lathrop Brown, rented rooms in Westmorly Court, (now B-Entry of Adams House) the newest and most luxurious building on Harvard's Gold Coast. Equipped with all the latest innovations ? central heat, electricity, a modern "hygienic" bathroom ? the suite contained over 600 sq. feet of living space spread over 4 rooms, with 14' ceilings, French doors, and a working fireplace. These spacious quarters, which were meticulously decorated in high Victorian style by FDR and his mother Sara, represent a mode of living almost unimaginable to students today.

Our mission is to restore Roosevelt's rooms to their 1900 appearance, both as the only existing memorial to the former President at Harvard, as well as a living museum of College student life at the turn of the twentieth century

http://www.fdrsuite.org/index.html

[vanshnookenraggen]

I feel like this is ill timed with this recession and all.

[jass]

I have some friends at harvard and their room looks like it was old and dirty before FDR was even born

[czsz]

Bad precedent. If Harvard started turning all its famous alumni's dorm rooms into museums, it would have to buy the other half of Allston to house its current students.

[Lurker]

This is essentially a more expensive version of George Washington or Abraham Lincoln "slept here in...." plaques. I sincerely doubt FDR's hi-jinks within and decor of this dormitory really shaped the character he is known for. Unless someone really wants an exhibit detailing the development of his late sleeping habits and heavy drinking?

What's next, the preservation of where Winston Churchill spilled his booze on carpets and discarded his spent cigars?

[JohnAKeith]

Ironically, the room will not be handicapped-accessible.

[kmp1284]

The president credited with getting us through the Depression and they choose to memorialize him by doing up his old dorm room into a life size shoebox diorama of victorian pretension? Insanity, absolute insanity.

[shiz02130]

FDR's policies did not help end the depression. If anything, his price/wage fixing made the depression worse. Maybe I'm just bitter because I wanted to be in Adams, and got quadded.

[kmp1284]

Of course, I never said his policies did get us through the depression, just that he's usually credited as such.

[stellarfun]

Does not Harvard plan on soon beginning a decade-long, $1 billion program of gutting and renovating all the River houses, starting with the oldest first? And isn't Adams the oldest? I suppose they could gut and then recreate a museum suite, sort of like what the Smithsonian did with its Colonial era house from Ipswich, or Peabody Essex did with its China house.