Get your cameras ready for the ultimate PRIDE month Instagram locale. Beginning today, June 14th, the staircase at the FDR Four Freedoms State Park will be transformed into New York City’s largest Pride flag to date.
New York’s Largest Pride Flag
The Four Freedoms Park is a Louis Kahn-designed memorial dedicated to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the four freedoms, located on the southern tip of Roosevelt Island in NYC. It was completed in 2012 and is free to the public.
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The event serves as the official unveiling of New York City’s largest LGBTQ Pride Flag. From Friday, June 14 to Sunday, June 30, the Park’s monumental staircase will transform into a massive Pride flag, sponsored by Bloomberg, to celebrate the progress that’s been made over the past 50 years, and to shine a light on the LGBTQ community’s continued fight for the universal human rights articulated in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms Speech: freedom of speech & expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.
The Four Freedoms outlined in my great-grandfather’s 1941 State of the Union address included freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. Our concept of human rights is always evolving; the idea of freedom is not static. Part of the park’s mission in commemorating and celebrating those freedoms is to educate current and future generations and to inspire them to re-define and re-imagine those concepts for themselves.
The coincidence of WorldPride with the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall Riots is an important moment for New York City and for the LGBTQ+ movement worldwide. I’m inspired by how forward thinking the Four Freedoms were in 1941 and I would like to think that if my great-grandparents were alive today, they would include LGBTQ+ rights among those for which they advocated and fought. As a member of the Four Freedoms Park Conservancy’s Board of Directors, I am excited to align with WorldPride in New York City and to show solidarity with the LGBTQ+ movement and those fighting for LGBTQ+ rights in a visible and inclusive way. — Julia Ireland, June 2019
The Park will host a free World Pride celebration for all ages, including food trucks for a special picnic on the lawn (with food, wine and beer available for purchase), VideoOut onsite all day capturing coming out stories for their online library (you can sign up for a time slot here) and Drag Queen Story Hour, at 12:30 PM and 2:00 PM, reading books that focus on diversity and inclusion, from Little Bee Books. (Event details subject to change).
The Park is located on the southern tip of Roosevelt Island in New York City, in the East River between Manhattan and Queens and is the first memorial dedicated to the former President in his home state of New York.
The official unveiling of the 12’ x 100’ LGBTQ Pride flag to celebrate World Pride will take place Saturday, June 15 from 12:00-6:00 PM. The event is free. For more information and to register, visit here.
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