State breaks ground on presidential museum
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By SUSAN SMALLHEER Staff writer - Published: August 2, 2009
PLYMOUTH NOTCH – President Calvin Coolidge, famous for thrift, gave away $1 million in 1929 after he left the White House to the Clarke School for the Deaf, rather than use the money for his own presidential library.
"Coolidge never wanted a presidential library," said Mimi Baird of Woodstock, a trustee for the President Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation, attributing his decision to Vermont-born president's innate modesty.
The Vermont Division for Historic Preservation and the Coolidge Foundation broke ground this week on the next best thing, the President Calvin Coolidge Museum and Education Center, a $2.7 million joint project at the president's homestead.
The new museum and center is incorporating the existing 1972 visitor's center, and will create a new entrance to the state's largest historic site.
Inside the building will be an enlarged visitor's center, gift shop, museum and display area. The foundation's office will be located in the new center, which will have classrooms and a small auditorium. The building will be fully winterized, and part of the joint project's aim is to have Vermont students visit the site during the school year.
The historic site's buildings open around Memorial Day and closes mid-October.
It won't be a presidential library, Baird said. The fact Coolidge had the money and gave it to the Clarke School, where his wife Grace once worked, "that just speaks to his character," she said.
Construction crews from Wright Construction of Mount Holly started work last Monday; a ceremonial groundbreaking with Gov. James Douglas, a strong supporter of the project, was held late Saturday afternoon. The new center was designed by Jay Ancel of Black River Design of Montpelier.
The groundbreaking will cap Plymouth Old Home Day, a day full of celebrations, including a festive fund-raising dinner Saturday evening at The Notch, as it is called locally.
Baird, a longtime trustee of the Coolidge Foundation and the chief fund-raiser for the new center, said she was reviewing some of the original documents from the 1960 establishment of the foundation, and said the foundation was created with the express purpose "to create a library in honor of Calvin Coolidge."
"Next year, in 2010, we'll be celebrating our 50th anniversary; and it's taken us 50 years to live out the original goal," she laughed.
The new museum and education center will not be a presidential library, reiterated John Dumville, chief of the state's historic sites. Current Coolidge scholars have a variety of libraries in which to do research: the Library of Congress, the Forbes Library in Northampton, Mass., the Vermont Historical Society, and Plymouth Notch, the president's birthplace.
Dumville said the state Division for Historic Preservation always has put an emphasis on historic objects, rather than papers, he said. The Coolidge family donated most of the Vermont family papers to the state historical society, Dumville said.
Coolidge himself, who while born in Vermont started his political career in his adopted hometown of Northampton, started giving his political papers to the Forbes Library in the Massachusetts city.
Dumville and Baird said the new center was a great collaboration, and that neither the state nor the foundation could put together such a project on their own.
The state contributed two-thirds of the $2.7 million cost, spread out over a number of budget years, Dumville said. Baird said the foundation raised $900,000 toward its share of the center.
The new center is being built on the east side of the existing visitor's center, so that it doesn't impinge on the historic views of the village. The new library will have a view of East Mountain and the meadow, a natural amphitheater, where concerts have been held in the past. The two-story building will contain 14,400 square feet.
The new building will be a combination of clapboard and stone, as the visitor's center is currently. The stone, mica schist, will be mined in Plymouth Notch.
Dumville and William Jenney, site administrator, said visitors will have an introductory video about Coolidge, and that other 1920s newsreels will be more readily accessible to history buffs.
There will be special displays on Grace Coolidge, the president's wife, and their two sons, John and Calvin Jr., who died at age 16 while his father was president. There also will be a display about the Coolidges' White House pets.
Dumville said the new and renovated space will allow the state to mount more modern exhibits, taking advantage of technology.
One news reel that Jenney wants to show features the Plymouth Old Time Dance Orchestra, a musical group made up entirely of Plymouth residents who went on a national tour in 1926, when Coolidge was president.
"It was a novelty act that performed music from the 1880s and 1890s," Jenney said. Many of the orchestra members were cousins of the president, and they visited him at The White House.
"And we have in our collection the instruments they played," said Dumville.
Baird said the foundation and the division for historic preservation didn't have trouble seeking funding from the Legislature, because it was a cooperative agreement between the state and a local nonprofit.
"It's the coolest thing," she said. Or did she say Coolidge thing?
susan.smallheer@rutlandherald.com
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