Last year I wrote two stories on presidential homes, one on the Hermitage, Andrew Jackson’s grand house in Nashville, and the other on Franklin Roosevelt’s lifelong home, also grand, in Hyde Park in Upstate New York. Neither is known for art, but they’re museums and fair game. Springwood, the proper name for FDR’s house since Hyde Park is the town, also houses the first presidential library, which opened in 1940 under FDR’s close supervision. He was an expert image-maker and storyteller, so he understood the value of a cottage industry dedicated to himself and his reputation.
A few weeks ago, I visited Plymouth Notch, the Vermont hamlet where Calvin Coolidge was born, grew up, and summered. He’s buried there among generations of Coolidges. Coolidge (1872–1933) was a Massachusetts pol. He left Plymouth for college at Amherst and, like tens of thousands of young people, to this day, who leave Vermont for school or a first job, he never came back. His political base was Northampton and, more broadly, western Massachusetts. There, he held more elective offices than any other president before or since, starting as a city councilman and mayor, moving to the legislature, then lieutenant governor, then governor, Warren Harding’s vice president, and, when Harding died in 1923, president.
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