Presidential images, history, and homage: Memorializing Theodore Roosevelt, 1919-1967
Alan R. Havig examines the effort of the Roosevelt Memorial Association (RMA) to secure a site on the Washington, D.C., mall to erect a memorial to Theodore Roosevelt. Havig argues that it was not the grandiose design by architect John Russell Pope that doomed the proposal, but that many in and out of Congress felt that constructing a memorial to Roosevelt in the 1920s was too soon after his death. Other critics argued that Roosevelt had not yet earned a place among the memorials to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Havig notes that Roosevelt, while denied a monument in the nation’s capital, would gain a memorial on Theodore Roosevelt Island in 1967, and he would earn a place on South Dakota’s Mount Rushmore among the figures that he was deemed unworthy of joining in the 1920s.
Four illustrations, three photographs of memorials to Roosevelt, and the logo of the Theodore Roosevelt Association populate the essay.
