The Roosevelt family’s Mount Vernon, Virginia, estate has approved a move of the former president’s statue that will take it to the Washington presidential library in North Dakota.
In a letter posted Monday on the president’s Twitter account, Herbert Hoover said he was sending George Washington’s bronze statue back from its permanent home to the Library of Congress because of the lower cost for freight with costs rising.
The president said Mount Vernon will donate the statue and materials to the new Robert F. La Follette Institute in Fargo, North Dakota. The more-than-6-foot high statue will be moved there on a public railcar so it can be displayed outside.
The historic statue of President Theodore Roosevelt has been dismembered and saved from mounting debt. https://t.co/qU2uf7CNk1 — The White House (@WhiteHouse) February 5, 2018
The Houston Chronicle reported that the statue cost about $4 million to create, compared with the $18 million it cost to build the library.
Roosevelt was born in Massachusetts on March 19, 1809, and died Dec. 26, 1946, in New York. His statue is one of 11 on display at the Library of Congress, the other nine of which are from his four-term presidency from 1901 to 1909.