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CORRECTION APPENDED

At the turn of the 20th century, the landmarks that now define Harvard were still a distant reality. Where the Harvard Kennedy School is now, a railroad yard stood. The land that would later host Eliot and Winthrop Houses were occupied by an unsightly mixture of power plants, coal yards, and store houses. The present-day iconic buildings, including Widener, Lamont Library, and the Science Center had yet to be built.

Harvard was a long way from the egalitarian admissions policies that created its now diverse student-body, and the University only had housing for 27 percent of its undergraduates.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, class of 1904—an ambitious, blue-blooded member of the New York clan—was steeped in the wealth and privilege of the Gilded Age.

By his sophomore year, the younger Roosevelt’s elder cousin Theodore “Teddy,” class of 1880, had already ascended to the American presidency.

A graduate of The Groton School, an elite New England boarding school, Roosevelt was one of a select few who traveled to Cambridge in his senior year of high school to scout premier dorm rooms. His suite of rooms would come to a sum of $400 a year—the annual salary of a working man at the time.

Well-heeled freshmen, including Roosevelt, enjoyed the luxury of Gold Coast dormitories—ornate, privately owned residence halls that often included swimming pools and squash courts. These newly constructed buildings had recently replaced the antiquated Yard dormitories as the epicenter of student life.

Roosevelt’s deluxe trio of high-ceilinged rooms—now B-17 of Adams House—features an oak fireplace and modern amenities such as central heating and electricity. While many of his peers weathered New England winters by purchasing coal to heat their rooms manually, Roosevelt was able to hire a maid service and porter to perform these duties.

It wasn’t until 1929—when Roosevelt was Governor of New York—that University President Abbot Lawrence Lowell introduced the House System which was intended to bridge the socio-economic divisions that had characterized residential life at the College.

Current Adams House Masters Judith Palfrey ’67 and Sean Palfrey ’67—who is the great-grandson of Theodore Roosevelt—have initiated an effort to restore the FDR suite to the condition when Roosevelt inhabited it.

But the process of renovating the suite, which will be the only existing memorial at Harvard to the former President, has highlighted a dramatic shift in undergraduate residential life over the last 100 years and has chronicled Roosevelt’s shift from a privileged youth to the populist icon who was elected to the American presidency four times.

ROOSEVELT REMEMBERED

“The reason that there’s no memorial to Roosevelt at the University is because he’s considered to be a traitor to his University and to class interests,” said Michael D. Weishan ’86, a former Adams House resident and the architect of the project.

As President, Roosevelt ushered in the New Deal Era, when social welfare programs were instituted to combat the worst economic crisis in American history—the Great Depression.

Doris K. Goodwin, the presidential scholar and Roosevelt biographer who delivered the memorial lecture at the benefit dinner for the restoration project, said that when Roosevelt returned to Harvard to deliver Harvard’s 300th Commencement address in 1936, he was not well received by the Wall Street barons in the audience. [SEE CORRECTION BELOW]

The former University President Abbott Lawrence Lowell, who presided over the ceremonies, wrote in his invitation to Roosevelt, “[W]e hope you will choose for your theme for a brief address something connected with Harvard... and feel that you would welcome this opportunity to divorce yourself from the arduous demands of politics and political speechmaking.” The note ended with a request for Roosevelt to keep his comments to less than 10 minutes.

His language towards big business was “fiery,” Goodwin said, noting that Roosevelt “transformed America into a middle-class country.”

“It was only when the war was on the horizon that he had to re-create those alliances and send an olive branch to the business community,” Goodwin said.

As an undergraduate, Roosevelt was exposed to an environment that was predominantly white, male, and Protestant. The record of his courses reveal that he may have had presidential aspirations even as an undergraduate—enrolling in classes that included Constitutional Government, Public Address, and Administration of the Government of the U.S.

“His classmates didn’t like him while he was here and considered him standoffish and stuck-up,” said Weishan, the project’s architect.

But the legacy of the his presidency has been the New Deal liberalism of the post-war era—a legacy that clashed with the class interests of his former peers and Harvard faculty.

A Harvard Crimson poll conducted during Roosevelt’s first term found that undergraduates and faculty members were overwhelmingly opposed to the New Deal policies.

“It’s about understanding a time and a man,” Weishan said. “With everything in history, there’s a cycle. FDR is swinging back into favor, concurrent with this renewed interest.”

Goodwin noted that the timing of the renovation coincides perfectly with the current political climate. She drew parallels between President Barack Obama and Roosevelt, saying that both men have proven adept at conveying a realistic picture of the economic and political challenges facing the country, while simultaneously inspiring confidence in the American people.

“It’s the children and grandchildren of the people that once considered him to be a traitor to his class that now recognize him as one of the great American presidents,” she said.

RESTORATION

A Harvard time capsule dating back to 1900 features approximately 70 photographs of regular college fixtures that serve as a reference point for the project’s architects. It includes photographs of items such as beer steins, pipes, paraphernalia of membership in social clubs, and school banners taken by Julian Burroughs, class of 1901. The pictures have been preserved by the Harvard University Archives to depict daily student life at the University at the turn of the 20th century.

According to Weishan, the preservation of the room’s features from the original floor plan to the antiquated pull-chain toilet is intended to not only pay tribute to the former president, but to serve as testament to the dramatic changes in student life that have occurred since FDR first occupied the suite more than ten decades ago.

“We are on an amazing detective quest to put together the pieces of this jigsaw puzzle,” he said. “The goal is to open the door and think you’re in 1903.”

Until 1960, the specific location of Roosevet’s suite remained unknown as a result of Adams House’s dramatic expansion over a period of 60 years. A letter written by Roosevelt’s former roommate at Harvard, Lathrop Brown, finally identified the room’s location in the “B” entryway of Adams House.

That year, Eleanor Roosevelt placed a commemorative plaque in the suite that had alternated between uses as student suite and a faculty office since Roosevelt’s graduation until as late as 2005.

Information from the Harvard archives and original documents of private correspondence have helped to create a historical palette of the conditions of life when Roosevelt resided in Adams House between 1900 and 1904.

Beginning in his early days in boarding school, the young Roosevelt maintained a constant correspondence with his mother Sara Roosevelt. Sara—who according to Weishan predicted that Roosevelt was destined for greatness as a child—saved everything from his baby shoes to locks of his hair.

Original letters exchanged between mother and son have been used to determine the manufactures of many of the fixtures in Roosevelt’s suite, including Jordan Marsh for the rug and Paine for the curtains.

Weishan attributed the renewed interest in historical preservation to University President Drew G. Faust’s role as a leading Civil War scholar. Faust serves as the honorary chair of the project.

“The preservation of Harvard’s history is not something that is always undertaken with great relish,” Weishan said, noting that when the steeple of Memorial Hall burned down in 1956, then-University President Nathan M. Pusey ’28 is said to have remarked, “Too bad the whole damn building didn’t burn down.”

In addition to heading the restoration effort, Weishan is charged with the task of recruiting donors amidst a deepening economic crisis. Weishan said that the primary sources of funding will be private individuals, corporations, and people with an interest in presidential history.

Similar to the John F. Kennedy ’40 suite in Winthrop House, the completed room is intended to house visiting dignitaries, scholars and public figures. But the FDR suite which will also serve as a memorial, will only be open to the general public once or twice a year due to security concerns.

“From our point of view at Adams House, this is a wonderful remembrance of a terrific hero,” said Adams House Master Judith Palfrey. “We are very proud of the fact that he lived in those rooms at the turn of the century.”

—Staff writer Bita M. Assad can be reached at bassad@fas.harvard.edu.

CORRECTION

The Feb. 24 news article "The Legacy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt" incorrectly stated that Doris K. Goodwin had already delivered a memorial lecture for the restoration project. In fact, Goodwin will not deliver a memorial lecture until Feb. 28.