Franklin D. Roosevelt: Autograph Note Signed "FDR" as Assistant Secretary of the Navy....

Description

The extended description below was supplied by the consignor. We are making it available to our web bidders who are interested in more in-depth research and broader historical perspective. Please note that presentation (i.e. framing), lot divisions, and interpretations of condition and content may occasionally differ from our descriptions. Assertions of fact and subjective observations contained in this description represent the opinion of the consignor. These remarks have not been checked for accuracy by Heritage Auctions, and we assume no responsibility for their accuracy; they are offered purely to allow the bidder insight into the way the consignor has viewed the item(s) in question. No right of return or claim of lack of authenticity or provenance based upon this extended description will be granted.

In FDR's own hand in its entirety, as Assistant Secretary of the Navy on 4 x 6" Memorandum Office of the Assistant Secretary stationery. FDR writes in his own hand: "Sol.../ Hold until something further develops in Congress./ FDR/ Assistant Secretary." This handwritten note, though undated, and related to another ANS on this very topic which is part of this FDR Collection, refers to a 1917 attempt to acquire property by the United States Navy for $60,000. Could FDR be writing to his fellow New Yorker Sol T. Bloom in this ANS, given Bloom's work in the real estate and construction business during this time, as well as in 1917 serving in the Naval Reserve as a Captain? Sol T. Bloom was a United States Representative from New York; born in Pekin, Illinois, March 9, 1870; moved with his parents to San Francisco, California, in 1873; attended the public schools; engaged in the newspaper, theatrical, and music-publishing businesses; superintendent of construction of the Midway Plaisance at the World's Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893; moved to New York City in 1903 and engaged in the real estate and construction business; captain in the New York Naval Reserve in 1917; elected as a Democrat to the Sixty-eighth Congress on January 30, 1923, to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Representative-elect Samuel Marx; reelected to the Sixty-ninth and to the twelve succeeding Congresses and served from March 4, 1923, until his death in Washington, D.C., March 7, 1949; chairman, Committee on Foreign Affairs (Seventy-sixth through Seventy-ninth Congresses and Eighty-first Congress), Special Committee on Chamber Improvements (Eighty-first Congress); director of the United States George Washington Bicentennial Commission; director general of the United States Constitution Sesquicentennial Commission; chairman of the Committee on Celebration of the One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the United States Supreme Court; director and United States Commissioner, New York World's Fair, in 1939; interment in Mount Eden Cemetery, Westchester Hills, New York. An ANS from this period in FDR's professional life is very rare, as may be a rare reference to fellow New Yorker Sol T. Bloom.