In 1955 Congress authorized a commission to oversee the construction of a memorial to Roosevelt. The present site in West Potomac Park was set aside in 1959. After years of rejecting design submissions, the Commission of Fine Arts approved a design by Lawrence Halprin in 1978. In the 1980s Congress authorized construction and partial funding. The groundbreaking ceremony was held in September 1991, followed by a fund-raising drive to raise an additional $10 million from private sources for construction, which began in the fall of 1994. The memorial opened to the public in May 1997.