President Calvin Coolidge Historic Site: Mixing Rural Charm and High-Octane Scholarship

Earlier this week, I wrote about Coolidge Land, the President Calvin Coolidge Historic Site in Plymouth Notch in Vermont. I focused mostly on the core buildings, all with deep Coolidge associations and preserved mostly as he knew them.

I’ll write today on the development of the Coolidge Foundation’s unusual mission. Libraries and research centers devoted to presidents since JFK are opulent affairs. The Obama presidential center in Chicago, for instance, is expected to cost about $900 million, nearly double its initial estimate. Financed by the federal government and private donors, these libraries tend to be temples, but also, housing as they do millions of presidential papers, they’re archives for scholars. The Nixon Library in Whittier in Southern California is unusual. It’s an archive and research center but also owns Nixon’s childhood home.

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Brian T. Allen

Brian T. Allen is National Review’s art critic.

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Earlier this week, I wrote about Coolidge Land, the President Calvin Coolidge Historic Site in Plymouth Notch in Vermont. I focused mostly on the core buildings, all with deep Coolidge associations and preserved mostly as he knew them.

I’ll write today on the development of the Coolidge Foundation’s unusual mission. Libraries and research centers devoted to presidents since JFK are opulent affairs. The Obama presidential center in Chicago, for instance, is expected to cost about $900 million, nearly double its initial estimate. Financed by the federal government and private donors, these libraries tend to be temples, but also, housing as they do millions of presidential papers, they’re archives for scholars. The Nixon Library in Whittier in Southern California is unusual. It’s an archive and research center but also owns Nixon’s childhood home.