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Val-Kill, which are managed by the National Park
Service.
This project will dramatically enrich the experience of visitors to the
Roosevelt National Historic Site and greatly expand the capacity of the FDR Library and the Roosevelt Institute
to communicate the vitality of the Roosevelt legacy to people in the 21st century. The orientation, conference
and education center will provide facilities for orientation films, conferences, educational programs, and
community events, as well as greatly improved visitor services. The renovation of the FDR Library, which is
also part of the project, will, for the first time, provide space for changing exhibits. Currently, there is
no effective way to welcome visitors when they arrive at the Roosevelt site, to show them an orientation film,
or to provide them with convenient services. Facilities for conferences and educational programs are limited.
Changing exhibits, the lifeblood of vital museum programming, cannot be mounted for lack of space. The new
center and renovation of the Library will change all that. Their completion will fulfill FDR's vision of the
Library as a dynamic, growing institution and meet the needs of the more than 160,000 visitors and thousands
of students who come to one of the most important historic sites in the nation each year.
Congress has appropriated $9.4 million for the visitor center, which will
be built by the National Archives and Records Administration. The campaign goal is $21 million, including
the congressional appropriation. The Roosevelt Institute is the private sector partner in this enterprise
that includes construction of the orientation, conference, and education center, restructuring the
presidential library, and making the presidential museum the showcase for the history of the Roosevelt
era. The center and renovated museum will enable students, historians and the general public to understand
the transforming events of the Depression, New Deal, and World War II and the assumption of international
leadership by the United States.
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