The FDR Library

by Ben Chen

Franklin D. Roosevelt (initially FDR) was the 32^nd President of United States who is not only well respected in the United States but also in many other countries as well.  There is an avenue named after him in Taipei.  FDR won a record four presidential elections and served from March 1933 to his death in April 1945.  During our last stay in the United States, we paid a visit to Home of FDR (Springwood) which is located on Hudson River in Hyde Park, New York.  This is the second Presidential Library I visited other than JFK.

FDR was born in 1882 to an old, prominent Dutch family from upstate New York.  Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., his fifth cousin, was elected as the 26^th President of United States when FDR attended Harvard.  FDR married Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, Theodore's niece, in 1905 and they had six children.  FDR served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy between 1913 and 1920.  He served as a reform governor from 1929 to 1932, and promoted the enactment of programs to combat the Great Depression.  Then, the successful governor defeated incumbent Republican president Herbert Hoover easily in November 1932, at the depth of the Great Depression.  FDR successfully leaded major legislation and issued a number of executive orders that instituted the New Deal—a variety of programs designed to produce relief for the unemployed, recovery of economic growth, and reform through regulation of Wall Street, banks and transportation.  He leaded the United States during a time of worldwide economic depression and total war.

In 1921, Roosevelt contracted polio during his vacation in Canada.  (Research published in 2003 concluded that the features of FDR's illness and his age were more consistent with a diagnosis of Guillain–Barré syndrome, an autoimmune disorder, rather than polio.)  The disease left him with permanent paralysis from the waist down but Roosevelt refused to accept that.  He laboriously taught himself to walk short distances while wearing iron braces on his hips and legs by swiveling his body, supporting himself with a cane.  He usually appeared in public standing upright, supported on one side by an aide or one of his sons.  Most American did not know the reality of his disability until his death.

The Springwood house was bought by FDR’s father in 1867 and was expanded and rebuilt a couple times.  In the main hall are his boyhood collection of stuffed birds and stamps.  There is a huge living room and library on the ground floor.  A wheel chair was sitting beside the desk.  The Birth Room, where he was born, and boyhood bedroom were maintained at the second floor.  Some rooms were used to entertain notables such as Winston Churchill and King George VI.  A tiny secret elevator was built inside of the house for FDR use.

The FDR Library and museum was designed by FDR himself.  It is a stone Dutch colonial building sitting on 16 acres of the Springwood estate donated by FDR in 1940.  After FDR was reelected to the third and fourth terms, the study became his office away from the White House.  This is the only presidential library that was used by a sitting President.  FDR had a lifelong interest in ships and the sea, and especially in US Navy history.  The library holds his extensive collection of naval paintings, prints, and ship models along with gifts from around the world.