Roosevelt Island Day

Eddie and I went to Roosevelt Island today.  It was the Japanese Cherry Blossom Festival.

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We had a great time - even though the Cherry Blossoms were not quite in full bloom yet.  After the Cherry Blossoms we walked down to the end of the island where the Franklin Roosevelt Monument Park was it.
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Before you got to the park, you walked past the old smallpox hospital.  This is a picture of the hospital behind the Japanese music.
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Louis Kahn was a great architect that has since passed away.  His last work (in the 1970s) was a design for Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms Park.  It is kind of meh - but the position at the end of Roosevelt Island overlooking the United Nations is great.  What starts as kind of an okay park ends up being a very moving place.

The Four Freedoms are written on the other side of this rock.  In case you forget what they are in 1941 Franklin Roosevelt outlined what all people, anywhere in the world should expect.  Freedom of Speech & Expression.  Freedom to Worship God as they please.  Freedom from Want.  Freedom from Fear.  And he said, "That is no vision of a distant millennium, it is a definite basis for a kind of world available in our on time and generation."

The park with the UN in the background.