Two historic sites in the Hudson Valley hark to case studies in scale. David and Goliath come to mind, except they are on the same team.
To the south is a small site that operates on $200,000 per year; to the north is something of a Goliath with a multimillion-dollar budget. Their commonality rises from the need to translate history into a sustainable force into the future.
The Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Museum in Hyde Park was built during FDR”™s presidency with privately donated funds at a cost of $376,000 to house papers dating from his tenure as Navy secretary (1913-1919) through his presidency. Last year it attracted more than 101,000 visitors ”“ to a county of 300,000 ”“ plus thousands of scholars who wormed into the site”™s 17-million pages of history and 400 individual collections either onsite or online.
Its operating budget for fiscal year 2010 was $5.6 million and includes donations, grants admission fees and federal funding.
Last year, the library welcomed 15,884 students and 680 teachers participated in 25 different instruction workshops.
Roosevelt himself saw the need to centralize his papers for history. Previously, as the library put it in response to written questions, “the final disposition of presidential papers was left to chance.” In 1955, Congress formalized the process via the Presidential Libraries Act.
The library reported, “The Roosevelt Library and the Wallace Center is funded through money appropriated by Congress to the National Archives and Records Administration and the income generated by admission fees, the museum store, photo reproductions and facility rentals.” Staffing includes “23 full-time employees, four part-time employees and 35 full- and part-time contractor employees. The library is also assisted in its work by the Roosevelt Institute, a private nonprofit partner.”
The library was turned over to the federal government on July 4, 1940, to be operated by the National Archives. The National Archives and Records Administration manages the site along with 12 other presidential libraries.
According to the library staff via Clifford Laube, the public program specialist who assembled the answers: “By his actions, Roosevelt ensured that his papers would become the property of the nation and be housed in a library on the grounds of his Hyde Park estate where they would be available to scholars. Roosevelt’s creation served as a precedent.” More than 1,300 scholars researched FDR on-site last year and thousands more accessed data via computer. The library houses a total 17 million pages of documents in approximately 400 collections.
The library was opened to the public on June 30, 1941. FDR visited it often during the war to sort and classify his papers and memorabilia. And, “From his study in the library he delivered several of his famous radio speeches or ”˜fireside chats.”™”
In 1942, FDR sketched wings to be added on to the north and south sides of the building should additional space be needed for his wife”™s papers. “At the time of her death in 1962,” according to the library, “Eleanor Roosevelt’s papers totaled a staggering 3 million pages. In 1972, the wings FDR envisioned were added to the original building in Mrs. Roosevelt”™s memory to house her papers and a gallery about her life.”
In 2003, the library opened the Henry A. Wallace Visitor and Education Center, the first new building added to the grounds since the Roosevelt Library was dedicated in 1941. It serves as a joint visitor center for the Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site and Roosevelt Presidential Library, and as a conference and education center.
To the south
When the Rev. W.H. Weigle assumed the pulpit of the St. Paul”™s Church in Mount Vernon in 1929, his first sermon was a jaw-dropper: the church built in 1665 needed $300,000; the building was going to you-know-where in a hand basket.
“Clearly, hard times had come to St. Paul”™s by the time he arrived,” said David Osborn, site director of what is now the St. Paul”™s National Historic site. “The neighborhood was changing over to industrialization and he was met by a declining parish.” The finances were declining in lockstep. Weigle was a well-established Manhattan minister, whose previous church was known for tending to Episcopalian thespians from Broadway. “In no way did he want to preside over a declining parish.”
The site is also home to the Society of the National Shrine of the Bill of Rights, which partners with the National Park Service to run the staff, its 6.5 acres and buildings.
Weigle”™s first sermon ”“ an appeal for $3.75 million in 2011 dollars ”“ earned coverage in The New York Times. Weigle had conscripted Sara Delano Roosevelt to the cause of saving St. Paul”™s and she in turn conscripted the Times”™ Sulzberger family for support. Weigle served until 1949.
To gain secular friends, according to Dick Forliano, who served seven years as chairman of the Society of the National Shrine of the Bill of Rights and who serves on its board of directors today, “What Rev. Weigle did was to connect Eastchester” ”“ the St. Paul”™s churchyard is the old Eastchester Village Green ”“ “with freedom of the press. He overemphasized the link with freedom of the press and he underemphasized the link with freedom of religion. Nobody told any lies, but the meaning may have gotten misconstrued. We have a connection with freedom of the press, but we have a greater connection with freedom of religion.”
John Peter Zenger, the father of freedom of the press, earned his stripes publishing details of the “Election of 1733,” a rigged affair that took place on the Eastchester Village Green. “But it”™s a myth he covered the trial,” said Forliano, who is also president of the Eastchester Historical Society and who taught history for 40 years. “He never set foot in Eastchester.”
By May 1977, the writing was on the wall at St. Paul”™s Church on South Columbus Avenue. The 30 by 60-foot Colonial masterpiece that had been a field hospital for both Tories and Revolutionaries had dwindled to a congregation of several families, its finances beyond even the most ardent tithers. It was at this time, Forliano said, that a group of locals gathered as the Bill of Rights society and struck a deal, first with the diocese and later with the Park Service, to run it.
In 1980, the Episcopal Diocese of New York, which runs some 200 active parishes between Manhattan and Kingston, sold St. Paul”™s to the federal government. Such a move might seem historically obvious, but at the same time and as part of the same effort to consolidate congregations, the diocese sold its 1844 Church of the Holy Communion in Manhattan for use as a drug rehab center. It became the Limelight nightclub in 1983, site of a grisly murder; it”™s now a market.
In 1992, the Park Service and the society faced a new challenge. Initial enthusiasm for the site was waning and it attracted just a few thousand people per year. The Park Service asked the Bill of Rights society to revisit the historical record under an interpretive theme of “diversity and dissent.” The result, in Forliano”™s words: “A great historic site. Under David (Osborn), we”™re attracting 15,000 people a year now. We rely heavily on David; he does a great job.”
Osborn has run St. Paul”™s for 10 years and says of his job, “I do a lot of grant writing, but on occasion I also pitch in to help with the mowing. If you take a walk around, you”™ll see ”“ there”™s a lot to mow.” His Ph.D. is in American history from the City University of New York.
“There was certainly no shortage of places for Episcopalians to worship,” said Osborn of the move to deconsecrate and sell churches. “This is a big building to run for just a few families.”
But St. Paul”™s across the years had gained powerful friends and ”“ who could doubt it? ”“ seemed to have friends in heavenly places. With help from the Roosevelts ”“ mother Sara and son Franklin in the White House ”“ St. Paul”™s had been named a national historic site in 1943, making available federal dollars for repairs, including needed roof work.
While the neighborhood around the site on South Columbus Avenue would grow more industrial since the cornerstone was laid in 1763, the site itself would remain a lush oasis of American History.
Today, St. Paul”™s runs on $200,000 per year, plus what the Bill of Rights society raises, primarily via its annual historically themed dinner ”“ this May it is the Civil War sesquicentennial. “The dinner and our lectures attract about 70 to 80 people,” Forliano said. “We”™ve brought a lot of attention to the site.”
St. Paul”™s noteworthiness includes a bell cast by Whitechapel Foundry, the same London bell maker that cast the Liberty Bell. The bell is about a quarter the size of the Liberty Bell; it has no crack and is still rung on occasion. Naturally for a building this storied, there is a ghost, possibly an aggrieved minister and quiescent of late, according to Osborn; he and his wife are buried in the church basement.
The church”™s 1838 organ ”“ unique and essentially priceless ”“ is still used for recitals.
