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Lawrence Halprin, Landscape Architect of the FDR Memorial

Lawrence (Larry) Halprin was born in 1916, sixteen years before Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected as President of the United States. As a young man growing up in Brooklyn, New York, he witnessed the Great Depression and the beginning of World War II. He also saw firsthand the reinvigorated sense of leadership FDR brought to the nation at a time where it was deeply needed. Upon reflection later in his life, Halprin said that “FDR was [his] president.”

A person with a khaki coat and bucket hat stands in front of rushing granite waterfalls with a large smile on his face.

Larry Halprin at the FDR Memorial

Halprin earned a degree in landscape architecture from Harvard University in 1942; two years later, he was commissioned into the US Navy, tying his relations closer to FDR, who served as the Assistant Secretary for seven and a half years. These experiences that Halprin went through as a young adult, living through the Great Depression and World War II and seeing FDR’s vision and leadership created a visceral connection that created a passion behind his inspiration for the FDR Memorial. 

Larry Halprin’s design would eventually be chosen in 1974, after two other designs were rejected by the FDR Memorial Commission for design issues. Halprin would recruit Leonard Baskin, Neil Estern, Robert Graham, Thomas Hardy, and George Segal, where they would work collaboratively to design and create artwork evoking FDR’s time throughout the memorial.

Rather than designing a single monumental statue similar to most presidential memorials, Halprin saw the FDR Memorial as an elaborate outdoor landscape. The memorial’s five outdoor rooms, constructed from red South Dakota granite, represent Roosevelt’s four terms as president and a prologue room. As visitors move through the rooms, water features, sculptures, and quotations engraved in the walls show the national crises and transformations of the Roosevelt years, including the Great Depression, the New Deal, and World War II. Halprin also designed the memorial with accessibility at the forefront, making the FDR Memorial the first wheelchair accessible presidential memorial in Washington, DC.

Halprin’s wife, Anna, was a noted dancer and assisted him in incorporating the concept of “scoring” and movement-based design that he applied directly to memorial planning.

A watercolor drawing of outdoor stone rooms with waterfalls.A watercolor drawing from Halprin during the design process of the Memorial.

After the call for the addition of the FDR Wheelchair Statue, Halprin oversaw the development of the Prologue Room and was present at the Dedication Ceremony on January 10, 2001. 

Lawrence Halprin passed away at the age of 93, on October 25, 2009.

 

Halprin won multiple awards throughout his life, including:

  • 1964: American Institute of Architects (AIA) Medal for Allied Professions
  • 1969: Fellow in the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA)
  • 1978: ASLA Medal (Gold Medal)
  • 1979: Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture from the University of Virginia
  • 1979: Gold Medal for Distinguished Achievement from the American Institute of Architects
  • 2002: National Medal of Arts
  • 2003: ASLA Design Medal



Other notable works of Lawrence Halprin include:

  • Portland Open Space Sequence (1963–1971), Portland, Oregon — Halprin transformed eight downtown blocks into linked pedestrian spaces. The sequence includes Lovejoy Fountain, Pettygrove Park, and Ira Keller Fountain, using trees, berms, plazas, pathways, and dramatic cascading water to make the city feel like a series of connected outdoor rooms. 
  • Freeway Park (1976), Seattle, Washington — Built over Interstate 5, this pioneering park helped reconnect areas of downtown Seattle that the freeway had divided. Dense planting, elevated walkways, angular concrete, and waterfalls turn an infrastructure deck into a complex public landscape. 
  • Nicollet Mall (1967), Minneapolis, Minnesota — A pioneering pedestrian and transit corridor that remade a commercial street around walking, buses, trees, public furnishings, and downtown civic life. 
  • Levi’s Plaza (1981), San Francisco, California — A landscaped corporate campus that incorporates public-feeling walkways, gardens, terraces, plazas, and water features rather than separating the workplace from the city around it. 
  • Bunker Hill Steps (1989), Los Angeles, California — A monumental stepped landscape linking Grand Avenue and Bunker Hill with lower downtown Los Angeles, using water, planting, terraces, and movement through elevation as central design elements