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Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum Building

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1964; Eggers and Higgins; Wetherell, Harrison and Wagner
  • Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum Building (David Gebhard and Gerald Mansheim)

The New York firm of Otto R. Eggers and David Paul Higgins was engaged to design the library and museum. Both Eggers and Higgins had been longtime associates (since 1922) of John Russell Pope; and it was their firm that completed Pope's work in Washington, including the Jefferson Memorial and the National Gallery. The selection of the firm for the Hoover project was a logical one, not only because of its Washington connections but because of the many Colonial Revival buildings the architects had designed, both while they were with Pope and afterward. Their solution to the design for the combined Hoover library and museum was meant to be a modest one, a design that in scale and size would seem at home in a small community. Their product was a single-story stone-sheathed building somewhat reminiscent of a post-World War II suburban dwelling, with just the needed light flavor of the Colonial Revival (and a slight hint of the then-popular California ranch house).

Writing Credits

Author: 
David Gebhard and Gerald Mansheim
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Data

What's Nearby

Herbert Hoover National Historic Site
Friends Meetinghouse
Birthplace Cottage
Blacksmith Shop
Schoolhouse

Citation

David Gebhard and Gerald Mansheim, "Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum Building", [West Branch, Iowa], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/IA-01-ME385.5.

Print Source

Buildings of Iowa, David Gebhard and Gerald Mansheim. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993, 152-152.

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