Original site and name During a weekend visit to
Boston on October 19, 1963, President Kennedy and
John Carl Warnecke, the architect who designed
Kennedy's Tomb of the Eternal Flame at
Arlington National Cemetery viewed several possible locations offered by
Harvard University as a site for the library and museum. At the time, there were only four other
presidential libraries: the
Hoover Presidential Library, the
Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, the
Truman Library, and the
Dwight D. Eisenhower Library. They were all scattered around the country in small towns from
New York to
Iowa. Kennedy had not decided on any design concept yet, but he felt that the existing presidential libraries were placed too "far away from scholarly resources." By March of that year $4.3 million had been pledged, including 18,727 unsolicited donations from the public. Large donations came from the Hispanic world with
Venezuela pledging $100,000 and
Governor of Puerto Rico Luis Muñoz Marín offering the same. The oral-history project also began recording, starting with Jacqueline Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. Originally projected to consist of interviews with 150 people, 178 had agreed to participate and the total number of expected participants doubled to 300. The next day the
Indian ambassador to the United States,
Braj Kumar Nehru. presented Black with a check for $100,000 during a ceremony at the River Club. Nehru said that the Indian people were hit by a "sad blow" when the President died, and that they held him "in the highest regard, esteem and affection." He desired for
Indian students abroad in the United States to use the library, then still planned for construction at Harvard along the banks of the Charles River.
Pei selected as architect on the Columbia Point segment On December 13, 1964, the Kennedy family announced that
I. M. Pei was unanimously chosen by a subcommittee as the architect of the library. Even though Pei was relatively unknown amongst the list of candidates, Mrs. Kennedy, who viewed him as filled with promise and imagination and after spending several months inspecting the many architects' offices and creations, selected him to create the vision she held for the project. Pei did not have a design yet, but the idea as described by Robert Kennedy was to "stimulate interest in politics". Meanwhile, the suggestion that Harvard may not be a suitable site for the library had begun cropping up. When asked if Pei may have had to start from scratch, he said this was the case. With an "encouraging grin" Robert Kennedy simply wished Mr. Pei "Good luck".
Years of setbacks In January 1966, when
Massachusetts governor John A. Volpe signed a bill allowing the state to purchase the land for the site—an old train yard belonging to the
Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA)—it was expected that the project would be complete by 1970. The original design was a large complex comprising the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, the
John F. Kennedy School of Government, and an
Institute of Politics. Only now could Pei prepare a six-month study of the site's soil, and he said the "money we had six years ago, today will barely pay for 60 percent of the original plans." The first in a series of installments expected to total $5 million, came from the profits of the 1967 book
The Death of a President which caused a bitter feud between the Kennedys and Manchester. Mrs. Kennedy remarked "I think it is so beautiful what Mr. Manchester did. I am glad that Senator Kennedy knew about it before he died." On May 22, 1971, President
Lyndon B. Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy as president, saw the dedication of the
Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum in
Austin, Texas. Meanwhile, the Cambridge community was in fierce opposition to having the library being built in Cambridge at all. Although originally welcomed in 1965, the library was now seen as a great attractor of over a million annual tourists who would change the neighborhood with "hordes of tourists, automobiles, fast-food franchises and souvenir shops", as well as cause a negative environmental impact. A neighborhood group filed a lawsuit in federal court demanding that the
General Services Administration study, which found that the great number of visitors would have "no adverse effect on the area," be reexamined. Stephen E. Smith, a Kennedy in-law who heads the John F. Kennedy Library Corporation decided that "we want the Kennedy Library to be a happy place. It would not be in keeping with the nature of this memorial for it to open in an atmosphere of discord and controversy." The site was originally a
garbage dump; Pei recalls finding old refrigerators and appliances under the soil. In all seriousness, he asserted that one could toss a lit match on the earth and watch the ground ignite as the soil emitted
methane gas.
Dedication The dedication was held on October 20, 1979. Outside the building on
the green, on a blue-carpeted stage with a bank of yellow
chrysanthemums sat the Kennedy family and those close to them. Among many others, President
Jimmy Carter was in their company. The ceremony began with President Kennedy's daughter,
Caroline Kennedy, introducing her brother,
John F. Kennedy Jr., who read from the
Stephen Spender poem, "I Think Continually of Those Who Were Truly Great". President Carter said of John F. Kennedy that he embodied "the ideals of a generation as few public figures have ever done in the history of the earth." He spoke of openly weeping upon hearing about the death of Kennedy, something that he had not done since his own father died, ten years before. Afterwards, he accepted the library "on behalf of the American people" Critics generally liked the finished building, but the architect himself was unsatisfied. The years of conflict and compromise had changed the nature of the design, and Pei felt that the final result lacked its original passion. "I wanted to give something very special to the memory of President Kennedy", he said in 2000. "It could and should have been a great project." Perhaps the most important consequence of the Kennedy project for Pei was his elevation in the public's consciousness as an architect of note. Pei considered the John F. Kennedy Library "the most important commission in my life."
Temporary closure During the
federal mass layoffs, the library was closed until further notice on February 18, 2025, at approximately 2:00 PM. The reason given was "Due to an executive order". The library reopened the next day with free admission. ==Exhibits and collection==