An Insider’s View of the TR Site
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Historical research is often compared to detective work. It consists primarily of locating small details and then trying to piece them together into a cohesive story. However, unlike detective work, in historical research you don’t usually have access to first-hand accounts since the characters have long since died. Personally, I know that I ...
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Following the assassination of President William McKinley, the nation looked for ways to express its grief regarding the sudden death of the immensely popular president. These ranged from letters written to McKinley’s grief-stricken wife, to flowers laid in the Temple of Music where the President was shot, to purchasing a wide variety of memo...
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Theodore Roosevelt famously enjoyed leading family and friends – not to mention an unsuspecting diplomat or two – on point-to-point hikes. His philosophy on these outings can be summarized as: “Over, under, or through, but never around.” In 1964, as concern grew that the home where Theodore Roosesvelt first took the presiden...
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Most of the world saw Buffalo’s 1901 Pan-American Exposition through the lens of Buffalo resident C.D. Arnold's camera. Arnold was born in Canada in 1844 and became famous for his photographs of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago. He was then awarded the contract to take the photographs of the Pan-Am that would be used on all official publicati...
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As part of the Site’s 50th anniversary celebration, the Artifact-of-the-Month is an object that was in the house when Theodore Roosevelt took the oath of office in 1901, but then took a slightly circuitous route back to the Site. The object that I’m referring to is one of the bookcases in the library -- to be more precise, the one in th...
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It can be helpful at times to step back and look at how many of the basic features of life, and in this case politics, have changed over America’s history. During the turn of the last century, it was well within the bounds of cultural and legal acceptance to exhibit the president’s face on all manner of things. The advertisement card, O...
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Before any big event, there are always last minute details - finalizing the menu, putting out extra chairs, some light cleaning, etc. But what happens when a key piece of your event has been lost in the mail? That’s the position that the Site was in when, less than a week before its opening on September 14th, 1971, a large box of custom-made ...
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The city of Buffalo began its exponential expansion after the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825. Seventy-six years later, in 1901, Buffalo hosted the Pan-American Exposition, which highlighted the glory of both Buffalo and electricity. August’s Artifact-of-the-Month is a sepia tone postcard with images of the homes of John Milburn and Ansl...
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Every day at the Pan-American Exposition was a special day. With 350 acres (or more than half a mile) of education and entertainment, the grounds of the Pan-Am were bustling with different daily activities. To help visitors keep track of the plethora of events, the Pan-American Exposition Program Company published an official daily program for ever...
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After his inauguration in 1901, the not-quite-43-year-old Theodore Roosevelt moved into the White House with his wife, Edith, and six children, ranging in age from 17-year-old Alice to almost-four-year-old Quentin. The energetic family quickly grabbed the attention of the American public with stories of kids roller-skating through the hallways and ...
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There is an often-used saying about Buffalo weather: “If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes and it will change.” In 1901, with the Pan-American Exposition’s May 1st opening day approaching rapidly, construction crews battled an abnormally wet winter and spring. Then, a freak April snowstorm dropped almost 10 inche...
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When I was in college, my Intro to Museum Studies course started out the section on collections management with the premise that “a person walks into a museum with a box.” For most museums, both large and small, this is how the vast majority of their collections are acquired -- from individual donors who have an item or items that they ...
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"Happy and fortunate is the man who can spend three days at the exposition. If he spends his time rightly it will be worth to him a year at college for the attainment of useful knowledge." (Leslie's Weekly, May 11th, 1901) For a man such as Theodore Roosevelt with his varied interests and a voracious appetite for knowledge (it was said...
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As the organizers of Buffalo’s Pan-American Exposition planned for the event’s May 1901 opening, they used a variety of ways to promote the fair. For example, the Pan-Am’s Publicity Bureau sent a series of posters to postmasters throughout the United States and the Western Hemisphere. The posters were designed to entice viewers to...
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When Theodore Roosevelt became President of the United States in 1901, after the assassination of William McKinley, he moved into the Executive Mansion with his wife (Edith), and their six energetic children. In January of 1902, less than six months after arriving at the White House, Theodore Roosevelt’s oldest daughter, the not-quite-eight...
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The Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site is operated by the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural Site Foundation, a registered non-profit organization, through a cooperative agreement with the National Park Service.
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