Category: FDR Suite Contents

For over a year now, we been searching for some sort of logo for the Foundation. We’ve thought of many different options, only to discard them one by one: too impractical, too difficult to reproduce, to expensive to commission… etc. etc. Then, the other day, I came across a mention of  a Roosevelt family crest, [...]

How’s this for an elliptical tale: I was sitting last evening in FDR Suite, attending a small get-together hosted by Claire Mays, ‘81, who’s our first guest since the Suite was sufficiently completed to lose its air of camping. There were nine of us, and we were sitting around in an odd allotment of chairs [...]

Who said you couldn’t put Humpty-Dumpty back together again? Several day’s worth  of hard work later, the Suite has emerged with its new coat of paper, remarkably transformed, looking for the first time in over a century very nearly like a Victorian room:

What’s next? Window treatments, and – hopefully – more generous contributions from [...]

An epic campaign ended today as the first rolls of  historic wallpaper were applied to the walls of the FDR Suite study. You may remember all the trials and tribulations we had in piecing together the pattern from fragments I discovered last summer behind the large radiator. Then Kari Pei, Head of Design at Wolf-Gordon [...]

One of the things that amazes me most about this project is that every now and then, a piece of the puzzle drops mysteriously from the sky, as if by preordained writ. I noted in a previous post how a strange and unlikely attraction to a tiny spot in Big Sur led me to Lathrop [...]

I’m delighted to announce that New England’s premier bedding manufacturer, Gardner Mattress, has agreed to donate custom mattresses for the FDR Suite bedrooms. While this may not sound like a world breaking-news event, finding a qualified company to make mattresses for our period beds had turned out to be quite a challenge.
Why, you ask?
As Gardner [...]

Hello All!
Again I must offer apologies for being off-line for so long: the season dictates that the day job (landscape design) be all-engaging, and so this notice will be brief. But much good news: The FDR Suite was again in the New York Times; the manufacturing problems of the study wall paper have finally been [...]

My apologies for not posting any news for the last several weeks, but these have been busy, heady days. Thanks to the generosity of our supporters, we’ve been able to begin the process of furnishing the Suite, slowing rolling back the years to May, 1904.
I thought you might be interested in seeing some of the [...]

As part of our opening festivities yesterday, members of the Adams Senior Common Room joined us for a bit of good cheer as we christened our newly restored (and just arrived one hour before) piano. Here are Adams House tutor Matt Corriel and I signing “The Bird in the Gilded Cage,” the smash hit of [...]

(This is the second installment in a continuing series taken from the unpublished notes of filmmaker Pare Lorentz. For the introduction to these articles, click HERE.)
The Lathrop Brown Interviews: Part II – The Harvard Years

Having a good time was of major importance in those days at Harvard. Customary procedure was to study for ten [...]