“It’s like walking back into his world,” said Ward about the grounds in Hyde Park, New York, that once were home to the Roosevelt family. "His library and home collections reflect all of his many interests — stamps, coins, birds he shot and had stuffed as a boy, model ships, children’s books, books about naval history, the pony-drawn sleigh he rode in as a child, and on and on."
Since FDR helped pioneer the present system of presidential sites in the late 1930s, a statewide network of museums and research centers has grown up, controlled in part by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), but otherwise as diverse as the men they commemorate. They include the picturesque Ronald Reagan Presidential Library & Museum in California’s Simi Valley, the small-town Herbert Hoover Library and Museum in West Branch, Iowa, and the sprawling Obama Presidential Center that opens to the public on June 19, Juneteenth, in Chicago.
Historian Douglas Brinkley, who has been to all of them, believes the post-FDR libraries are essential centers for lectures, research, school and tourist visits.
“Each of the libraries have their own aura,” says Brinkley. Roosevelt had a fantastic idea in giving his home in Hyde Park to the people of America, instead of having his documents stashed away in a warehouse in Virginia or Maryland. “He started a tradition of sending them to the president’s house.
A little of presidential spin Libraries come with a certain president’s personality and history. Brinkley and others highlight that, while the library records fall under the jurisdiction of NARA, the museum is supported by private benefactors who may wish to promote a specific president’s good moments or de-emphasis less favorable ones.
A page on the Hoover website about the Great Depression states that some of the programs Roosevelt began implementing after easily defeating Hoover for reelection had been first recommended by Hoover. For years, museum directors and the former president and his supporters battled over everything from custody of his records to how much room should be devoted to the Watergate crisis that contributed lead to Nixon’s resignation at the Richard Nixon library.
Max Boot, author of a Reagan biography due out in 2024, likened his access to the Reagan archives to the museum itself. The archives of the late president were "handled by federal officials in a completely professional and nonpolitical manner. “Nothing is being hidden. The exhibit “puts emphasis, of course, on Reagan’s successes and shortchanges his failures.
“It is designed to show a positive image. “Thus, books that criticize Reagan are not sold in the library bookstore,” Boot stated.
Presidential libraries will always reflect the highlights of a presidency, but “there has been some progress toward transparency in recent years,” said historian Ted Widmer, a former speechwriter for President Bill Clinton.He complimented the Lyndon Johnson library in Austin, Texas for dealing with LBJ's much-criticized Vietnam War record. The library played a part in reigniting interest in one of Johnson’s most infamous campaigns—the 1948 Senate contest that is now generally accepted to have been stolen—by posting recordings of interviews by Associated Press reporter James W. Mangan with a former Texas election judge who confessed to certifying false votes that helped LBJ win on its website.
“It’s hard to tell if future libraries will continue that trend in a time when history is increasingly politicized and polarized,” adds Widmer. “But it’s good for our democracy to encourage the study of history as it actually happened, not a sanitized version.”
He complimented the Lyndon Johnson library in Austin, Texas, for its courage to confront LBJ's highly criticized management of the Vietnam War. The library played a part in reigniting interest in one of Johnson’s most infamous campaigns—the 1948 Senate contest that is now generally accepted to have been stolen—by posting recordings of interviews by Associated Press reporter James W. Mangan with a former Texas election judge who confessed to certifying false votes that helped LBJ win on its website.
“It’s hard to tell if future libraries will continue that trend in a time when history is increasingly politicized and polarized,” adds Widmer. “But it’s healthy for our democracy to encourage the study of history as it really happened — not a whitewashed version.”
The Obama Experiment The Obama administration has been criticized for the size and aesthetics of the center — “The building has an ominous presence, its mostly windowless heft recalling a menacing sci-fi headquarters,” noted The Guardian’s Oliver Wainwright — and for the decision to not house a NARA facility on site. Much of the former president’s archives are digital, a trend Brinkley expects to continue with future libraries.
It is projected that the center’s 20-acre campus would draw up to 1 million visitors a year. Highlights include a public library branch, an NBA-grade basketball court, a fruit and vegetable garden and a playground. In May, former President Barack Obama tried one of the high metal slides.
“Fantastic,” he remarked after zooming down, according to a video released to social media by the Obama Foundation. “I was a little too tall for that.
Obama also was involved in many of the specifics and aspects of the center, including the texture of the stone on the museum’s 225-foot tower and a pair of high-backed reading chairs inside the library. Among favorite goods, however, are charcoal barbecues that may be used by the public. He presented the concept to the public during a community gathering in 2017 and was greeted with warm laughs from the hometown crowd.
No one barbecues here? Obama said at the time. “I thought this was Chicago’s South Side.”
