President Bill Clinton's metaphor opens to some debate among design critics. And after stepping through the doors of Clinton's presidential center, one senses that this is a history lesson like no other.
By KYLE BRAZZEL
Published November 28, 2004
[AP photo]
Lights reflect off a railroad bridge on the grounds of the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Center and Park in Little Rock, Ark. The $165-million glass and steel center is home to Clinton's library collection of more than 80-million presidential items.
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - What would you expect from the media-savvy man who teased us with the sax on The Arsenio Hall Show during his first campaign for president? Who indulged the "boxers or briefs" obsession of the MTV generation? How about a presidential library that has a whole lot more than books?
The William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Center and Park opened to the public Nov. 19, the day after it was dedicated by Clinton, President Bush and former presidents George Bush and Jimmy Carter.
The glass and steel building's horizontal orientation and rail bridge trusses, meant to evoke Clinton's ubiquitous "bridge to the 21st century" metaphor, modernize Arkansas' architecture by light years.
But the center also represents a novel concept in presidential libraries: accessibility.
Richard Olcott, lead architect along with James Polshek of New York's Polshek Partnership Architects, remembers the travel frustrations of scouting the country's 10 other presidential libraries, which range from Ronald Reagan's ranchlike complex in Simi Valley, Calif., to the funky pod scheme I.M. Pei devised for the John F. Kennedy Library in the Boston suburbs.
"In Atlanta, we got into a cab at the airport and told the driver to take us to the Carter library," Olcott recalled. "The response was: "Where is it?'
"Nobody's ever going to say that here."
And that's not just because library officials organized behind-the-scenes tours for area waiters and hotel doormen, who are likely to field plenty of library questions.
The site Clinton selected takes advantage of the rolling Arkansas River and the park's stone's-throw proximity to the city's most magnetic district, a strip of restaurants, museums, galleries and loft apartments.
Also, the kinetic thrust of the building's design is echoed in a stretch of interstate zooming nearby and forming the unofficial western boundary of the park. With an estimated 41-million vehicles per year, it is Arkansas' most-traveled corridor.
"The library is highly visible," said Lucas Hargraves of the Little Rock Convention and Visitors Bureau. "This was the first presidential library built with the tourist at the top of the list."
Post-it notes, saxophones
Oh, sure, there are the traditional presidential-library touches. The climate-controlled archives building, tethered to the 20,000-square-foot museum by a limestone tunnel, provides by-appointment access to about 80-million pieces of presidential paperwork, the most of any president. ("The mythology that e-mail would save paper is just that," Olcott said.)
Are any of them Post-it notes, you ask? "Tons of them," said David Alsobrook, the center's archivist. "And we don't know what happens with Post-its as they age because they haven't been with us for very long."
An oak-paneled conference area in the remodeled train depot housing the Clinton School of Public Service was designed after the reading room of the New York Public Library, complete with deep window seats and a working fireplace.
And presidential decorator Kaki Hockersmith of Little Rock cloned the Clinton Oval Office so meticulously that even the ivy on the fireplace mantle was grown from a cutting of the greenery in the White House.
The exhibits installed by Ralph Appelbaum, designer of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, make use of a colonnade of cherry shelving enveloping an interactive time line of Clinton's administrations.
The shelves, holding binders of manifests and presidential documents, bookend display cases showing off gifts from heads of state and the museum's vast collection of saxophones.
At the center's dedication, Clinton described his library as "telling the story of America at the end of the 20th century," and the rubric designating the theme of each alcove could be read as chapter headings in a history text.
There is "Restoring the Economy," "Preparing for New Threats" and "The Fight for Power," defensive language that sets the tone for the section's treatment of Clinton's impeachment battle, including mentions of Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky. This version has been filtered through the lens of what Hillary Rodham Clinton pronounced a "vast, right-wing conspiracy."
Like moths to a flame
To complement a time capsule entombed underground - artifacts including a Diet Coke can and a cell phone await their uncorking on Aug. 19, 2104, what would be Clinton's 158th birthday - video monitors broadcast each State of the Union address delivered from 1993 to 2000.
But library officials know that the 300,000 visitors they expect each year will be drawn as much by spectacle as by scholarship.
"We're very conscious that people are like moths, and this is a lighted-up place," said Polshek, the architect.
"Every project derives from the mission of the institution or the personality of the client, and Clinton was the ultimate populist president."
To that end, library officials are negotiating with their counterparts at that other shrine to a swaggering Southern icon with a large appetite, Elvis Presley's Graceland in Memphis. They hope to offer a two-for-one deal in which tourists can take in one museum, then head to the other.
But there's plenty to keep the Little Rock-bound entertained. How about jogging in Bill's footsteps? For the next several weeks, the tourism board will stock downtown hotel rooms, including the Peabody Little Rock (formerly the Excelsior Hotel, site of the infamous Paula Jones encounter) and the Capital Hotel, with maps detailing Clinton's old jogging route. The route begins at the steps of the Governor's Mansion (currently home to Republican Mike Huckabee) and includes a stop for coffee at the downtown McDonald's.
The first of the museum's rotating exhibits will be a celebration of the blues music of the Mississippi Delta. And perhaps to signify Clinton's alignment with the "creative class," a display on computer advancement dating from his first election focuses on the Mac, the choice of writers and designers, rather than the more businesslike PC. (During eight years as president, Clinton personally sent only two e-mails: one as a test and the second to John Glenn, then in space.)
For a more artful tribute to Clinton's installation in the pop culture pantheon, visitors might want to backtrack one exit down the interstate to the Arkansas Arts Center. It has collected 41 works that presidents since Kennedy have borrowed from institutions such as Washington's Corcoran Museum of Art and the Metropolitan in New York to personalize the White House to their tastes.
The centerpiece work in "Art and the White House: Presidential Selections 1960-2000" is Monet's Ile aux Orties, chosen by Richard Nixon. Clinton chose a sculpture by Roy Lichtenstein, Mr. Pop Art.
Visitors dizzied by the Clinton Center's bells and whistles can cool their heels under the 120-magnolia canopy of Contemplation Grove, for which the park's landscapers relieved a tree farm in Athens, Ga., of its entire crop. The magnolias join an arboretum of trees common to Arkansas, including maples, blackgum and river birch.
"There is something called the "wow factor,' where people who will visit will have really not experienced a building like this at all," Polshek said. "The design is about time, and it's about space, which all architecture is. But in a deterministic way, we were thinking about moving people up and in a comfortable way, making it clear where they were going, how they get out, where do they go to the bathroom, where do they sit down and rest. In that way, it's really a little bit like being on a boat as well as a bridge" to a new century.
-- Kyle Brazzel is a reporter for the Arkansas Democrat Gazette.
If you go
GETTING THERE: Several airlines have connecting service from the Tampa Bay area to Little Rock. The Clinton Presidential Center is about a 10-minute drive from the airport.
GETTING IN: The William J. Clinton Presidential Center and Park, at 1200 President Clinton Ave., is open from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 1-5 p.m. Sunday. It is closed on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day.
ADMISSION: $7 adults; $5 ages 62 and older, college students and retired military; $3 ages 6-17; free under 6, active military and school groups.
STAYING THREE: Hotels within walking distance and with stops on the River Rail trolley route:
Peabody Little Rock, 3 Statehouse Plaza, toll-free 1-800-732-2639; Capital Hotel, W Markham and Louisiana Streets, toll-free 1-800-766-7666; Courtyard by Marriott, 521 President Clinton Avenue, toll-free 1-800-321-2211.
Arkansas Arts Center, 501 E Ninth St., (501) 372-4000. Hours: 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday.
