Award of Merit: Cultural

Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library

To complete a renovation worthy of its namesake, the project team on the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library had to not only renew buildings but also sustain an institution that provides a comprehensive introduction to the life and legacy of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. In more practical terms, it had to create a facility able to handle more than 125,000 annual visitors to the library that honors the nation's 32nd president.

The $14 million project entailed building a 50,800-sq.-ft. addition and completing an 8,000-sq.-ft. renovation to an existing structure. The library complex located in Hyde Park, N.Y., has various structures on site, including the Roosevelt home, Eleanor Roosevelt's cottage, known as Val-Kill, and the former president's retirement retreat, known as Top Cottage.

advertisement

A key part of the project was designing and building the new visitor and education center, named for Henry Wallace. He was vice president from 1941 to 1945 before Harry Truman joined for the president's last term, and months later rose to the top job upon Roosevelt's death.

Using the existing library and the simple lines of nearby early Dutch architecture as inspiration, New York-based R.M. Kliment & Frances Halsband Architects designed the visitor center with a stone veneer of salvaged fieldstone to evoke the original 1939 library structure. The firm also used monumentally scaled wood windows and doors, exposed heavy timber wood trusses with wood decking, and glass porches with aluminum skylights that had stainless steel mesh-encased glass to channel diffused light.

The center also has touches of convenience, modernity, and accessibility. It features a custom mosaic tile map in the floor to provide an overview of the site and surrounding area. In addition, it has state-of-the-art audiovisual and teleconferencing facilities, is fully accessible to disabled visitors, and has an under-floor air supply system below all of the major ground floor spaces, with no visible ductwork. The project team also prepared the center and surrounding site to qualify for LEED certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.

The added space also addresses the severe space limitation that had crimped the museum's ability to change its exhibits, including a new 3,000-sq.-ft. special exhibit gallery that the renovation created within the original library building.