visitors may have had about the library’s appearance, for a masterpiece of building design and landscape perspective awaits in the form of a long, shimmering reflecting pool that stretches out between the library’s north and south wings and ends at the base of a gently sloping hill. Halfway up this hill, surrounded by lovely gardens on either side, is a grassy amphitheater. A visitor may exit the library
through doors on either side of the tall windows, walk along the length of the
The Nixon library’s outward appearance is, at first, a little
underwhelming: it is a stolid, slightly squat edifice with a vaguely neoclassical feel.
reflecting pool, and pause at the end, near the base of the hill, where curving paths lead upward on either side of the grassy amphitheater. The path on the left leads gradually upward to the Memorial Garden, the resting place of Patricia and Richard Nixon, where elegantly muted black granite headstones sit in an immacu- lately tended lawn surrounded by flower beds filled with blossoms. On the former president’s gravestone a simple epitaph proclaims: “The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker.”
Childhood Home
White House East Room, where large gatherings, such as dances and concerts, are held at the White House. Between the two wings is a large bank of floor-to-ceiling windows. The view outside these windows immedi- ately dispels any apprehensions
T H E E L K S M A G A Z I N E
u Four US presidents and first ladies were among the more than 50,000 people who attended the dedication of the Nixon library in 1990. Pictured (from left) are President Gerald Ford and his wife, Betty; President Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy; President Richard Nixon and his wife, Pat; and First Lady Barbara Bush and President George H. W. Bush.
Farther up the gentle gradient, on the hilltop, sits a modest bungalow- style house—the birthplace of Richard Nixon, the thirty-seventh president of the United States of America. His parents, Frank and Hannah, moved to Yorba Linda in 1912, settling on a fourteen-acre tract planted with citrus trees. Nixon was born a year later. The hillside rolls gently down
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