The Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum is the Presidential library of Herbert Hoover, the 31st President of the United States. Located in West Branch, Iowa, next to the Herbert Hoover National Historic Site, the library is one of thirteen presidential libraries run by the National Archives and Records Administration.
The 32,000-square-foot (3,000 m2) library was officially opened to the public on August 10, 1962, Hoover's 88th birthday.. Former President Hoover and Former President Harry Truman were present at the dedication where Hoover recited the following:
"When the members of the Congress created these presidential libraries they did a great public service. They made available for research the records of vital periods in American history - and they planted these records in the countryside instead of allowing their concentration on the seaboard. Already the three libraries of President Roosevelt, President Truman, and President Eisenhower, by their unique documentation, serve this purpose, and today we dedicate a fourth - my own. Within them are thrilling records of supreme action by the American people, their devotion and sacrifice to their ideals. Santayana rightly said: 'Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it.' These institutions are the repositories of such experience - hot off the griddle. In these records there are no doubt, unfavorable remarks made by our political opponents, as well as expressions of appreciation and affection by our friends. We may hope that future students will rely upon our friends. In any event, when they become sleepy they may be awakened by the lightning flashes of American political humor."
On August 8, 1992, former President Ronald Reagan rededicated the Hoover Library. The rededication was the result of a massive renovation project which expanded the library to 44,500 square feet (4,130 m2). Among the additions to the library were a 180-seat auditorium, a multi-purpose room accommodating 60, a conference room that seats 30, and a private meeting room designed for 15 people. The $8-million facelift was very much a public-private partnership, with Washington supplying $5 million for bricks and mortar, supplementing some $3 million raised by the Hoover Presidential Library Association for new exhibits and educational programming.
In addition to the papers of Herbert Hoover, the manuscript holdings include those of Lewis Strauss, Gerald P. Nye, Felix Morley, Clark Mollenhoff, Robert E. Wood, Westbrook Pegler, and Laura Ingalls Wilder, among others. More than 150 collections make the Library an important center for the study of conservative journalistic thought, agricultural economics, famine relief, atomic energy, and governmental reorganization.
Located several hundred feet behind the Library are the flat white marble gravestones of President Herbert Hoover and First Lady Lou Henry Hoover. The Hoovers rest in a large green area, with the backing semicircle constructed of a high hedgerow. Lou Henry Hoover was originally buried in Palo Alto, California, after her death from a heart attack at only 69, but upon her husband's death in 1964, she was re-interred at the Library
The Hoover Library is located within the Herbert Hoover National Historic Site, which contains Hoover's birth house and Hoover's father's blacksmith shop, and the West Branch Commercial Historic District which preserves aspects of West Branch's Main Street.
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“The President is not only the leader of a party, he is the President of the whole people. He must interpret the conscience of America. He must guide his conduct by the idealism of our people.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)
“I got me flowers to straw thy way;
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But thou wast up by break of day,
And brought’st thy sweets along with thee.”
—George Herbert (1593–1633)
“[O]ur people are steadily increasing their spending for higher standards of living ... the slogan of progress is changing from the full dinner pail to the full garage.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)
“Because of these convictions, I made a personal decision in the 1964 Presidential campaign to make education a fundamental issue and to put it high on the nation’s agenda. I proposed to act on my belief that regardless of a family’s financial condition, education should be available to every child in the United States—as much education as he could absorb.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)
“To look at and properly appreciate the British Museum is the work of a lifetime.”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)