Design
The lead architect of the project was Edward F. Neild. Truman had picked Neild in the 1930s to design the renovation of the Independence and construction of the Kansas City Jackson County Courthouses after Truman was impressed with Neild's work on the Caddo Parish, Louisiana, Courthouse in Shreveport, Louisiana. Neild was among the architects of the Truman White House reconstruction.
Neild died on July 6, 1955, at the Kansas City Club while working on the design.
Truman had initially wanted the building to resemble his grandfather Solomon Young's house in Grandview, Missouri.
In response to a New York Times review that recalled Frank Lloyd Wright influences in the library's horizontal design, Truman was reported to have said, "It's got too much of that fellow in it to suit me."
Built on a hill overlooking the Kansas City skyline on land donated by the City of Independence, the Truman Library was dedicated on July 6, 1957, in a ceremony which included the Masonic Rites of Dedication; those attending the ceremony included former President Herbert Hoover, Chief Justice Earl Warren, and former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.
A $23 million dollar renovation of the entire facility was completed in 2001 on a design by architects Gould Evans. The changes included the extensive use of glass in the relatively windowless structure and significantly altering the space between Truman's grave and the museum.
Read more about this topic: Harry S. Truman Presidential Library And Museum
Famous quotes containing the word design:
“Nowadays the host does not admit you to his hearth, but has got the mason to build one for yourself somewhere in his alley, and hospitality is the art of keeping you at the greatest distance. There is as much secrecy about the cooking as if he had a design to poison you.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“What but design of darkness to appall?—
If design govern in a thing so small.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“You can make as good a design out of an American turkey as a Japanese out of his native stork.”
—For the State of Illinois, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)