Skip to footer

Presidential libraries: from Boston to Honolulu ... or maybe Chicago

Presidential libraries can be found coast to coast, and may even go beyond that once a site is selected for President Obama's future repository of documents and artifacts. To quickly hopscotch around to the 13 official presidential libraries and museums overseen by the National Archives, plus that of Abraham Lincoln, check out this library list.

14. Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum *

Seth Perlman/AP
Figures of the Abraham Lincoln family, from left, Tad, Robert, Mary, Abraham and Willie, are shown standing in front of the 1861 White House at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum in Springfield, Ill., March 24, 2005.

  • By Ross Atkin Staff writer

* - not part of the official national network of presidential libraries. The Lincoln Library was built with a combination of federal, state, and local funds. Its operation is funded by the State of Illinois.          

Website: www.alplm.org/

Location: Springfield, Ill. (Lincoln's birthplace: Hodgenville, Ky., 1809)

Opened:  2005

Attendance: 297,183

Admission: $12 adults; $9 seniors

Bestselling gift shop biography: "Lincoln" by Ronald C. White

Hot-selling souvenirs: 3-inch Lincoln penny replicas, quill ballpoint pens, and magnet depicting museum buildings

Lesser-known facts: Daniel Day-Lewis, the Oscar-nominated actor who portrays the Lincoln in the hit movie of the same name, spent a day at the library and museum in 2010 in preparation for the role. In addition, researchers for the Spielberg movie measured and photographed the museum's Lincoln White House scene so it could be replicated. Looking for authentic sounds for possible use in the the movie, the visitors also recorded sounds from such original artifacts as Lincoln's law office clock and his wife Mary's music box. 

14 of 14
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.