Post by The Brez Man on Jun 15, 2013 19:15:22 GMT -5
This is president Taft's boyhood home. He lived here from the time he was born until he went off to college at Yale. The home had been through many owners through the years. In the 1960's it was used as an apartment complex until the 20 year restoration on it began.
Items of note, there is not much parking at the adjacent visitor's center (maybe enough for about 6-8 cars. It didn't seem to me that they get a lot of visitors, compared to the Lincoln house in Springfield, but that's not really fair since Lincoln is a much more popular historic figure.
The visitor's center is fairly small and contains an area that describes the Taft family's history in politics. There's a short 10-15 minute movie you can watch here before getting a tour of the house.
Our house tour was conducted by a college student (I'm assuming) as opposed to a NPS Ranger, but she knew her stuff. The upstairs of the house contains exhibits about the president, including the bible used for his inauguration. The house tour took about 20-30 minutes and then you can view the exhibits in the upstairs on your own.
In addition to site's stamp (which desperately needed cleaning from all the ink gunk), they also had a stamp for the Charles Young Buffalo Soldiers National Monument.
The Junior Ranger badge is a unique in that it has a likeness of Taft on it as opposed to having the generic NPS one.
There's a lot I didn't know about Taft, including the fact that he became a U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice AFTER he was President.
Taft is buried in Arlington National Cemetery and I had visited his grave there in 2010.
Items of note, there is not much parking at the adjacent visitor's center (maybe enough for about 6-8 cars. It didn't seem to me that they get a lot of visitors, compared to the Lincoln house in Springfield, but that's not really fair since Lincoln is a much more popular historic figure.
The visitor's center is fairly small and contains an area that describes the Taft family's history in politics. There's a short 10-15 minute movie you can watch here before getting a tour of the house.
Our house tour was conducted by a college student (I'm assuming) as opposed to a NPS Ranger, but she knew her stuff. The upstairs of the house contains exhibits about the president, including the bible used for his inauguration. The house tour took about 20-30 minutes and then you can view the exhibits in the upstairs on your own.
In addition to site's stamp (which desperately needed cleaning from all the ink gunk), they also had a stamp for the Charles Young Buffalo Soldiers National Monument.
The Junior Ranger badge is a unique in that it has a likeness of Taft on it as opposed to having the generic NPS one.
There's a lot I didn't know about Taft, including the fact that he became a U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice AFTER he was President.
Taft is buried in Arlington National Cemetery and I had visited his grave there in 2010.