The Beantown Bloggery

Interesting little tidbit in the news this weekend about a project that's currently going on to restore FDR's dorm room at Harvard.  All I can say is FDR's undergraduate dorm room was apparently nicer than my current apartment now.

Michael Weishan, a landscape designer in suburban Boston who is widely known as the host of “The Victory Garden” on PBS, is using the well-documented nonacademic habits of Roosevelt and Brown as a basis for furnishing their dorm room. Mr. Weishan has founded the nonprofit FDR Suite Foundation to restore the two-bedroom unit in the Adams House dorm as a minimuseum and guest quarters.

The suite, officially B-17, is in an 1890s Tudor building originally called Westmorly Court, designed by Warren & Wetmore, the architects of Grand Central Terminal. Roosevelt and Brown paid $400 in annual rent, while Harvard’s tuition cost just $150. The cushy building offered daily maid service and an indoor swimming pool with fireplaces and padded wicker armchairs along the tiled deck. William K. Vanderbilt, who lived down the hall from Roosevelt, decorated his rooms with stuffed animal heads and photos of yachts.

All I can say is WOW.

Click (here) to read the NY Times article.

Click (here) to see more pics of the restoration project.