Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum
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| Richard Nixon Presidential Library | |
 View from birthplace looking across gardens to the Nixon Library Museum |
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| Location | 33°53′21″N 117°49′10″W / 33.88917°N 117.81944°WCoordinates: 33°53′21″N 117°49′10″W / 33.88917°N 117.81944°W Yorba Linda, Orange County, California, USA |
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| Dedicated | July 19, 1990 |
| Rededicated | July 11, 2007 |
| Named for | Richard Nixon |
| Size | 52,000 square foot (4,800 m²) |
| Management | NARA, Nixon Library & Birthplace Foundation |
| Website | Nixon Library Nixon Foundation |
The Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum is the presidential library of Richard Milhous Nixon, the 37th President of the United States. Located in Yorba Linda, California, the library is one of twelve administered by the National Archives and Records Administration. From its original dedication in 1990 until becoming a federal facility on July 11, 2007, the library and museum was private and was known as the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace. The nine acre (36,000 m²) campus is located at 18001 Yorba Linda Boulevard in Yorba Linda, California and incorporates the National Historic Landmarked Richard Nixon Birthplace where Nixon was born and spent his childhood.
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[edit] Dedication
The original Library & Birthplace was officially dedicated on July 19, 1990. Former President and Mrs. Nixon were present, as were Then-President George H.W. Bush, former President Gerald Ford, former President Ronald Reagan, and former first ladies Barbara, Betty, and Nancy.
[edit] Facilities
The Museum, housed in a 52,000 square foot (4,800 m²) building, offers a narrative of Nixon's life and career. Behind the museum is the Birthplace, the house constructed by Nixon's father (made using a homebuilding kit; manufacturer unknown) and restored as it was in 1910. President and Mrs. Nixon are buried on the grounds, just a few feet from the Birthplace. Since California prohibits burial of remains on private property, the intended burial plot at the Library had to be deeded to a local church who classified the plot a cemetery.
The Nixon Library compound also contains the Loker Center and Annenberg Court, a 38,000-square-foot (3,500 m2) wing with a Special Exhibit room and a replica (slightly larger than the original) of the East Room of the White House that can be rented for events such as weddings and business meetings. This wing is under the control of the Nixon Foundation.
[edit] Permanent museum collection
There is an extensive collection of memorabilia, formal clothing, and photographs of Nixon, his wife Pat, and children. This collection includes an assortment of bronze figures of world leaders who had important relations with Nixon as President or previously, in his role as Vice-President under President Eisenhower. The leaders' bodies have been accurately recreated in lightweight bronze over a fiberglass frame, and they are dressed in their actual clothing.
The President's VH-3A "Sea King" helicopter, tail number 150617, is on permanent display outside the museum. The helicopter was in the Presidential fleet from 1961 to 1976, transporting Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford, and many foreign heads of state and government. President Nixon's final flight from the White House to Andrews Air Force Base on August 9, 1974 was aboard this aircraft.
[edit] Library collections
The Archive, which opened in March 1994, houses approximately 6.2 million pages of records as well as extensive photographs, film reels, and recordings. Once the transfer from the Nixon Presidential Materials project is complete, it will hold all of Nixon's presidential as well as his pre- and post-presidential papers.
[edit] Transition to National Archives
Approximately 46 million pages of official White House records from the Nixon Administration are stored at NARA's Archives II facility in College Park, Maryland in accordance with the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act of 1974 (PRMPA), and will be transferred to the newly-federal Yorba Linda facility from 2007-2009. The Nixon Presidential Materials Staff (nicknamed the "Nixon Project") had no previous affiliation with the Nixon Library, but lent materials to the Library & Birthplace in the past (see record controversies). Upon completion of the transfer of Nixon papers, gifts of state and memorabilia, the Nixon Materials Project will be discontinued.
In January 2004, the United States Congress passed legislation that provided for the establishment of a federally operated Nixon Presidential Library. Specifically, the legislation amended the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act of 1974, which mandated that Nixon's Presidential Materials were to remain in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. Under this new legislation, the materials will be moved to a federally operated facility outside of the Washington, D.C., area.
In March 2005, the Archivist of the United States, Allen Weinstein, and the Reverend John H. Taylor, Executive Director of the privately run Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace Foundation, exchanged letters on the requirements that allowed the Nixon Library and Birthplace to become the twelfth federally funded Presidential Library, operated and staffed by NARA. On October 16, 2006, Dr. Timothy Naftali began his tenure as director of the Materials Project; he assumed the directorship of the newly renamed Richard Nixon Presidential Library & Museum on July 11, 2007 when the institution was officially welcomed into the federal presidential library system. In the winter of 2006/2007 NARA began transferring the 30,000 Presidential gifts from the Nixon Presidential Materials Staff in College Park, Maryland to Yorba Linda. Later that year, the Nixon Library and Birthplace began preparing for its transition from a private library to a federal Presidential Library, including retrofits to the facility to house Nixon's Presidential and pre-Presidential Materials according to NARA standards. NARA assisted the Library & Birthplace staff and the Nixon Foundation in planning for appropriate space to house these materials.[1]
[edit] Record controversies
Traditionally, materials and records of a U.S. president were considered to be his personal property upon leaving office. The Watergate scandal and Richard Nixon's subsequent resignation from office complicated the issue, however.
On September 8, 1974, Richard Nixon made an agreement with the head of the General Services Administration, Arthur F. Sampson. Nixon would turn over most materials from his presidency, including tape recordings of conversations he had made in the White House; however, the recordings were to be destroyed after September 1, 1979 if directed by Nixon or by September 1, 1984 or his death otherwise.
Alarmed that tapes documenting Nixon's White House years might be lost, Congress abrogated the so-called Nixon-Sampson Agreement by passing S.4016, signed into law by President Gerald Ford on December 19, 1974 as the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act. It applies specifically to materials from the Nixon presidency, directing the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to take ownership of the materials and process them as quickly as possible. Private materials were to be returned to Nixon's estate while those "relevant to the understanding of Abuse of Governmental Power and Watergate" as well as relating to the ordinary constitutional and statutory duties of the President and his White House staff were to be released to the public.
Screening of the tapes was completed by NARA staff as early as 1987, but only 63 hours of White House tapes had been released between 1974 and 1992. In March of that year, presidential historian Stanley I. Kutler, a professor of history and law at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with the advocacy group Public Citizen, filed suit to accelerate release of Nixon materials. Nixon intervened, arguing that NARA's priority should be to return private conversations to him, and in August 1993 obtained a court order directing NARA to stop further release of tapes until all private or personal materials had been returned to him.
Because of the legal situation, the Nixon Library was constructed and operated using private funds instead of being administered by NARA. The dispute continued after Nixon's death in April 1994.
On April 12, 1996 the three parties reached a settlement under which the injunction would be lifted and a schedule for release be adopted. The first materials released under this agreement, 205 hours of Abuse of Governmental Power conversation excerpts, were provided November 18, 1996. The second release on October 16, 1997 consisted of 154 hours of complete conversation recorded in the Cabinet Room from February 1971 through July 1973. The first chronological release was on October 5, 1999, it consisted of 443 hours of complete conversations, February through July 1971. The second chronological release was on October 26, 2000, it consisted of 420 hours of complete conversations, August through December 1971. Included are conversations recorded in the Oval Office, in the President's Old Executive Office Building office, and on his telephones.
The Nixon estate continued to argue, with the agreement of Kutler/Public Citizen, that NARA is not entitled to retain copies or originals of personal or private materials pursuant to the 1978 Presidential Records Act, which excludes such items from the official records which become the property of the United States after a president leaves office. The bulk of these issues were resolved with the passage of the January 2004 act, as well as the memoranda of agreement between NARA and the Nixon family.
Similar controversies over the release of presidential records have involved papers from the administations of John F. Kennedy and George Herbert Walker Bush.
[edit] References
[edit] General references
[edit] External links
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