John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum
The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum is the presidential library and museum of John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States. It is located on Columbia Point in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, next to the University of Massachusetts at Boston, the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate, and the Massachusetts Archives and Commonwealth Museum. Designed by the architect I. M. Pei, the building is the official repository for original papers and correspondence of the Kennedy Administration, as well as special bodies of published and unpublished materials, such as books and papers by and about Ernest Hemingway.
The library and museum is part of the Presidential Library System, which is administered by the Office of Presidential Libraries, a part of the National Archives and Records Administration.
The library and museum were dedicated in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter and members of the Kennedy family.
History
Original site and name
During a weekend visit to Boston on October 19, 1963, President Kennedy and John Carl Warnecke, the architect who designed Kennedy's Tomb of the Eternal Flame at Arlington National Cemetery viewed several possible locations offered by Harvard University as a site for the library and museum. At the time, there were only four other presidential libraries: the Hoover Presidential Library, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, the Truman Library, and the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library. They were all scattered around the country in small towns from New York to Iowa. Kennedy had not decided on any design concept yet, but he felt that the existing presidential libraries were placed too "far away from scholarly resources."Kennedy chose a plot of land next to the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration. The building would face the Charles River which was a few feet away, and on the other side of which, the dormitories that included Winthrop House where Kennedy spent his upperclassman days.
Since Kennedy encouraged his administration to save effects of both personal and official nature, the complex would not just be a collection of the President's papers, but "a complete record of a Presidential era." Therefore, the building would have the word "museum" appended to its name as the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
Initial progress
After President Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, his family and friends discussed how to construct a library that would serve as a fitting memorial. A committee was formed to advise Kennedy's widow Jacqueline, who would make the final decision. The group deliberated for months, and visited with architects from around the world including Pietro Belluschi and others from the United States, Brazil's Lucio Costa, and Italy's Franco Albini. Mrs. Kennedy and others met with the candidates together at the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis, Massachusetts, and visited several in their offices. The committee also conducted a secretive process whereby the architects voted anonymously for the most capable of their colleagues.After the assassination, Cambridge residents actively opposed the Kennedy family's efforts to build a presidential library at Harvard Square due to traffic concerns. On January 13, 1964, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy announced that a taped oral-history project was to be undertaken for inclusion in the library. The project would feature administration staff, friends, family, and politicians from home and abroad. The Attorney General also announced that Eugene R. Black Sr. agreed to serve as chairman of the board of trustees and that $1 million of Black's $10 million goal had been given to the trust by the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation.
By March of that year $4.3 million had been pledged, including 18,727 unsolicited donations from the public. Large donations came from the Hispanic world with Venezuela pledging $100,000 and Governor of Puerto Rico Luis Muñoz Marín offering the same. The oral-history project also began recording, starting with Jacqueline Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. Originally projected to consist of interviews with 150 people, 178 had agreed to participate and the total number of expected participants doubled to 300.
Fourteen architects were named to serve on a design advisory committee:
| Americans | Base |
| Pietro Belluschi | Dean of the MIT School of Architecture |
| Louis Kahn | University of Pennsylvania Architecture School |
| I. M. Pei | New York City |
| Mies van der Rohe | Chicago |
| Hugh Stubbins | Cambridge |
| Paul Thiry | Seattle |
| Benjamin C. Thompson | Cambridge |
| John C. Warnecke | Washington |
| Overseas | Base |
| Alvar Aalto | Finland |
| Franco Albini | Italy |
| Lucio Costa | Brazil |
| Sven Markelius | Sweden |
| Sir Basil Spence | England |
| Kenzo Tange | Japan |
Over the following months pledges continued to funnel in for the building still being conceptualized by the various architects. Some notable donations include $900,000 handed over to Postmaster General John A. Gronouski on July 9, 1964. It was the sum of a campaign encompassing 102 Federal agencies. Gronouski said many of the Federal employee contributions were in the form of a $5 withholding each payday for a period of three years. The next day the Indian ambassador to the United States, Braj Kumar Nehru. presented Black with a check for $100,000 during a ceremony at the River Club. Nehru said that the Indian people were hit by a "sad blow" when the President died, and that they held him "in the highest regard, esteem and affection." He desired for Indian students abroad in the United States to use the library, then still planned for construction at Harvard along the banks of the Charles River.
Pei selected as architect
On December 13, 1964, the Kennedy family announced that I. M. Pei was unanimously chosen by a subcommittee as the architect of the library. Even though Pei was relatively unknown amongst the list of candidates, Mrs. Kennedy, who viewed him as filled with promise and imagination and after spending several months inspecting the many architects' offices and creations, selected him to create the vision she held for the project. Pei did not have a design yet, but the idea as described by Robert Kennedy was to "stimulate interest in politics". Meanwhile, the suggestion that Harvard may not be a suitable site for the library had begun cropping up. When asked if Pei may have had to start from scratch, he said this was the case. With an "encouraging grin" Robert Kennedy simply wished Mr. Pei "Good luck".Mrs. Kennedy chose Pei to design the library, based on two considerations. First, she appreciated the variety of ideas he had used for earlier projects. "He didn't seem to have just one way to solve a problem", she said. "He seemed to approach each commission thinking only of it and then develop a way to make something beautiful." Kennedy made her choice based on her personal connection with Pei. Calling it "really an emotional decision", she explained: "He was so full of promise, like Jack; they were born in the same year. I decided it would be fun to take a great leap with him."
Not long before Pei was selected, the $10 million goal set by Black had been reached. By 1965, fundraising was suspended when the contributions reached $20 million.
Years of setbacks
In January 1966, when Massachusetts governor John A. Volpe signed a bill allowing the state to purchase the land for the site—an old train yard belonging to the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority —it was expected that the project would be complete by 1970. The original design was a large complex comprising the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, the John F. Kennedy School of Government, and an Institute of Politics. The project faced many delays. The MBTA would not agree to remove the heavy machinery from the land until 1970. By that time construction costs had risen to over $20 million. Only now could Pei prepare a six-month study of the site's soil, and he said the "money we had six years ago, today will barely pay for 60 percent of the original plans."Robert Kennedy, by then a senator from New York, had been serving as president of the John F. Kennedy Library Corporation until he was assassinated in 1968. Weeks before, William Manchester and Harper & Row donated $750,000 to the library. The first in a series of installments expected to total $5 million, came from the profits of the 1967 book The Death of a President which caused a bitter feud between the Kennedys and Manchester. Mrs. Kennedy remarked "I think it is so beautiful what Mr. Manchester did. I am glad that Senator Kennedy knew about it before he died." The youngest of the Kennedy brothers, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, stepped down as vice president of the corporation to fill the newly vacant position.
By 1971, construction had still not begun; researchers and scholars were forced to work out of the Federal Records Center which was temporarily housing some of the 15 million documents and manuscripts. Pei said there was finally "a clear way ahead". He was asked to save on construction expenses by using inexpensive materials. This would translate into Pei working with concrete instead of his preferred stone.
On May 22, 1971, President Lyndon B. Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy as president, saw the dedication of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum in Austin, Texas.
Meanwhile, the Cambridge community was in fierce opposition to having the library being built in Cambridge at all. Although originally welcomed in 1965, the library was now seen as a great attractor of over a million annual tourists who would change the neighborhood with "hordes of tourists, automobiles, fast-food franchises and souvenir shops", as well as cause a negative environmental impact. A neighborhood group filed a lawsuit in federal court demanding that the General Services Administration study, which found that the great number of visitors would have "no adverse effect on the area," be reexamined.
Stephen E. Smith, a Kennedy in-law who heads the John F. Kennedy Library Corporation decided that "we want the Kennedy Library to be a happy place. It would not be in keeping with the nature of this memorial for it to open in an atmosphere of discord and controversy." In February 1975 the plans for having the library where President Kennedy would have wanted it, were dropped.