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Things to do in Massachusetts
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John F. Kennedy Presidential Museum &
Library
The JFK Presidential Museum and
Library is the repository of the 35th President of the United
States on Columbia Point, Boston, Massachusetts, next to the
University of Massachusetts and the state's archives. Designed
by famed architect I. M. Pei, the building is where the original
papers and correspondence of the Kennedy administration is
stored and preserved; and the special materials that were
published or unpublished, like the books and papers about Ernest
Hemingway. It was dedicated in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter
and various members of the Kennedy clan. On a weekend trip to
Boston, on October 19,1963, President Kennedy and John Carl
Warnecke, the eventual architect that would design the
President's tomb in Arlington, looked at various locations in
the area that had been offered by Harvard, to become the site of
the Presidential museum and library. At that period in time,
there were only four others; Hoover's, Roosevelt's, Truman's and
Dwight D. Eisenhower, scattered across the country in small home
towns from New York to Iowa. John hadn't decided on any
particular design, but he did know that he wanted his
Presidential library to be close to a major scholarly resource.
Kennedy picked a piece of land that lay next to the Harvard
Graduate School of Business Administration, facing the Charles
River, just some yards away and on the opposite side were the
dormitories, including Winthrop House, where young John had
enjoyed his upperclassman time. John would be assassinated the
next month on November 22, 1963; and many people would be
forever changed. During Kennedy's tenure, he had instructed his
administration to save everything, official and personal, so the
complex would become a museum as well as library, containing an
entire record of the Presidential period. After John had been
assassinated, his family and friends talked about building a
library and museum that would be a fitting memorial, so a
committee was created to advise Jacqueline, so that she could
make the final decision. This committee discussed the project
for months, and talked with architects around the world. Mrs.
Kennedy and other people met the architectural candidates at the
Kennedy compound in Hyannis, Massachusetts; as well as going to
many at their offices. Fourteen architects were chosen to serve
on the design advisory committee; I. M. Pei from New York,
Pietro Belluschi the dean of the MIT school of architecture,
Lucio Costa from Brazil, Louis Kahn from the University of
Pennsylvania Architecture school, Mies van der Rohe from
Chicago, Sven Markelius from Sweden, Hugh Stubbins from
Cambridge, Franco Albini from Italy, Paul Thiry from Seattle,
Benjamin C. Thompson from Cambridge, John C. Warnecke from
Washington, Alvar Aalto from Finland, Kenzo Tange from Japan and
Sir Basil Spence from England. The Attorney General Bobby
Kennedy had chosen Eugene R. Black, Sr. to become the chairman
of the board of trustees, who stated that $10 million would be
the amount needed; with the Joseph P. Kennedy Foundation
contributing the first $1 million. By March of 1964, $4.3
million had been received from donations, including 18,727
unsolicited ones from the public. There were big donations from
the Hispanic community around the world, with $100,000 from
Venezuela and the same amount coming from Puerto Rico. A
campaign of donations had been contributed from the government
employees, with $900,000 coming in from them. The next day, the
ambassador from India gave Mr. Black $100,000, Braj Kumar Nehru,
who stated that the Indian people had held the former President
in the "highest regard, esteem and affection". In December of
1964, I. M. Pei had unanimously been chosen to design the
library and museum, but he was fairly unknown at the time,
although Mrs. Kennedy had been very impressed with him. Jackie
had chosen Pei for two reasons, she liked the numerous ideas
that he'd had for his earlier projects, and his way of having
more than one way to solve a problem. But, aside from that, she
made a personal connection with Pei, who had been born in the
same year as John and was so full of promise. Just before Pei
had been chosen, the goal of $10 million had been reached, and
by 1965, when it reached $20 million, fundraising was stopped.
Although there had been much enthusiasm in the project, there
were numerous delays, including the assassination of Robert
Kennedy. In May of 1971, Lyndon B. Johnson, would see the
dedication of his library in Austin, Texas, on the campus of the
University of Texas at Austin, and adjacent to the LBJ School of
Public Affairs. He was therefore the first President to have a
library that was also an institution of scholarly research,
before Kennedy's; although Lyndon would pass on before John's
was ever finished or started. More problems and changes
occurred, until finally a new site and new design would be
approved, so that on June 12, 1977, the official groundbreaking
began; with construction starting in August. The library
and museum were completed in October, 1979. The first floor
contains a museum with family photographs, video monitors, and
political memorabilia; with visitors starting their journey
through the museum and library with a film, narrated by John, in
two different cinemas that show them an orientation film; and
then a third that explains the Cuban Missile Crisis. After that,
these good people are encouraged to meander around the complex,
viewing the exhibits, that include the US space program during
Project Mercury, a look at the Kennedy family, his presidential
campaign trail, an area dedicated to the First Lady; and so much
more that it would take pages just to describe the title of
them. It is a marvelous museum and library to visit and you will
surely remember it for the rest of your lives; like those of us
that still remember that unbelievable day in November, just
before Thanksgiving, 1963.
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The House of the Seven Gables
The House of the Seven
Gables was a novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, in 1851, and
has become one of the classics of American literature, and sits
in Salem, Massachusetts. Currently, it is a museum that includes
a settlement house, that was owned by his cousin, Susanna
Ingersoll, entertaining Hawthorne many times in his youth. The
seven gabled house had been told to Hawthorne by his cousin in
childhood stories, and when he went there himself, there were
only three because of renovations. It was said that Susanna had
inspired Hawthorne to write the book, but he said that is was a
fictional work and had no special house in mind when writing it.
The book itself is set in the mid 19th century, with a brief
look into the history of the house that had been constructed
during the latter 17th century. The main thoughts of the book
was the subtle and distinct descriptions of the motive and
characters. This house was a gloomy New England mansion, haunted
from its very core by sudden death, fraudulent dealings and
accusations of witchcraft. It is a marvelous book and story, and
one that would be of great interest to many in this strange
period that we now live in. Hawthorne had been haunted by his
own thoughts because some of his ancestors had been involved in
the Salem witch trails, and this novel looks at the guilt,
atonement and retribution that occurs in the book. His book's
main family has a heavy burden to carry, for more than 2
centuries, of a dishonest, amoral way that the land was
acquired; and in his preface, he tells the moral that "the
wrongdoing of one generation lives into the successive ones and
becomes a pure and uncontrollable mischief". It received great
acclaim, especially after his first novel did so well which was
"The Scarlet Letter". It became a big influence for horror
fiction writer, H. P. Lovecraft, who said that it was New
England's greatest contribution to weird literature and led to
numerous films and movies.
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