Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum, Staunton, Virginia
I’ve written before in this space of Staunton, Virginia, a charming town in the Shenandoah Valley that is home to the American Shakespeare Center and excellent locavore restaurants like Staunton Grocery, Zynodoa, and Mockingbird. Staunton has an unusually high concentration of nineteenth-century commercial and residential buildings due to its importance first as a hops-growing center and later as a Civil War transportation hub.
Woodrow Wilson was also born here in 1856 though he only lived in Staunton for a few years before his father, a Presbyterian minister, moved the family to Georgia. The stately parsonage that served as the family home and a neighboring house today comprise the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum. The museum consists of a tour of the home, surprisingly modest but well-restored, and the exemplary museum to Wilson’s life and presidency, with a special emphasis on World War I. The high point of the museum is the replica of a trench network complete with triage room.
During the house tour, I was very impressed with our docent Thomas who made a point of connecting larger developments like the Industrial Revolution to items in the home. In particular, he noted that Staunton’s connection to railroad lines enabled the Wilsons to outfit their home with the latest mass-produced consumer goods like pressed-glass, plated silver, a cast iron stove, and the obligatory Singer sewing machine. The latter was placed in the family’s formal parlor near the window so that passersby could appreciate this important status symbol.
The exhibits of Wilson as a student, educator, and politician are full of fascinating details. The materials generally look fresh and are well-presented. Being a fan of ephemera, I especially enjoyed the political cartoons by the inimitable E.W. Kemble, the presidential campaign and inaugural items, and the World War I sheet music. The Myers Automatic Lever voting machine from 1892 is especially intriguing in our post-chad/electronic voting age.
Wilson who had dyslexia and didn’t learn to read until he was 11 quickly made up for lost time. At Princeton, he made waves by trying to change time-honored dining practices and publishing law articles suggesting British-style reforms for American government. After graduation, he went on to law school and earned a doctorate at Johns Hopkins. Everywhere he went, he left the impression that he was eager to overturn entrenched institutions. (As would be seen later, his progressive ideas excluded women’s suffrage and racial equality.) During a stint as a teacher at Bryn Mawr, Wilson earned the ire of dean and suffragist Martha Carey Thomas by delivering himself of statements like “teaching women relaxes my mental muscle.”
Wilson went on to serve as president of Princeton in 1902 and ran for governor of New Jersey in 1910. At the 1912 Democratic Convention (replica ticket above), he unveiled his New Freedom program, a progressive campaign based on individualism and states’ rights. On election, Wilson introduced a new sense of austerity by canceling the 1912 inaugural ball—even the ever-supportive Mrs. Wilson must have been peeved since she already had her dress.
The president’s first term saw the passage of major legislation such as the Federal Reserve Act, the Underwood Act, and the establishment of the Federal Trade Commission. Wilson also approved acts ending child labor and limiting railroad workers to eight-hour days. The president would not, however, agree to the NAACP’s request to form a National Race Commission.
Wilson won victory for a second term on the promise that “he kept us out of war.” But as American support of the Allies gained ground, the president concluded that America could not remain neutral. The museum’s World War I rooms make clear the role of art and popular culture in the spread of war sentiment. The golden age of the poster reached new heights with artists such as Howard Chandler Christy—“I wish I were a man so I could enlist” says one of his curly headed charmers—and Haskell Coffin, whose heroic “Joan of Arc Saved France” poster stirred hearts in America and Europe. The centerpiece of this part of the museum is the World War I trench experience, which opened in Fall 2010.
Though fairly small, the exhibit gives a realistic impression of the sights and sounds of trench warfare. Visitors are fully immersed in the wood-walled trenches and hear ear-splitting sounds of bombardment accompanied by an audio track of soldiers shouting in French. One trooper looks out over the wall through a periscope with another periscope stationed nearby so visitors can share the view. Around the corner, a triage room shows what doughboys injured on the field endured—try to see how many rats you can count peering from the corners. Small display cases show uniforms, gas masks, tools, and, in one, the gruesome results of a shrapnel wound to the face.
Wilson wanted to run for a third term, but his poor health prevented a serious attempt at campaigning. Eventually, it seems that his life came to revolve around daily drives in his elegant Pierce Arrow limousine, a car that the White House purchased to take the president home to Washington after the 1919 Versailles Treaty. Wilson loved the car so much that he allowed friends to purchase it for him and pinstripe it in Princeton Tiger orange. The grill even sports the AAA logo as Wilson was the first president to join to automobile association. The restored limousine returned to the Library in 2008 and the story of how it was nearly lost to history is a fascinating tale.
Photographs: The entrance ticket to the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum and the president’s Pierce-Arrow; photographs and text © Leann Davis Alspaugh, all rights reserved.
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