Renovations set to begin in 2025 at Hoover Museum in West Branch

WEST BRANCH — The first renovation at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum in 30 years, “Timeless Values | Modern Experience,” represents a giant step forward in preserving the past.

Two $1 million contributions in the past year, from well-known Cedar Rapids philanthropists Mike and the late Esther Wilson and Joanne and the late Ernest “Ernie” Buresh, have pushed the capital campaign, unveiled in 2021, closer to its $20 million fundraising goal for the museum makeover. The galleries will employ 21st century technology and increased accessibility to engage visitors of all ages.

All elements of this leap into the future will be celebrated Aug. 10, the 150th anniversary of Herbert Hoover’s birth in West Branch in 1874. The milestone birthday also will be the centerpiece of Hoover's Hometown Days on Aug. 9 and 10.

The museum and library opened Aug. 10, 1962, on Hoover’s 88th birthday. Former President Harry S. Truman joined his friend in dedicating the site devoted to the only president born in Iowa. A major building renovation in 1992 increased the museum’s footprint from 32,000 to 44,500 square feet.

The 2025-26 renovation will not add square footage, but will reconfigure the public spaces already there. The lobby will be expanded, and some walls may be moved inside the museum galleries.

Iowans step up

The Buresh gift, announced in December, brought the capital campaign to 73 percent of its goal, or $14.6 million. Six months later, that figure stands at $16.1 million, said Mundi McCarty, president and chief executive officer of the Hoover Presidential Foundation. That’s just over 80 percent, and she expects to reach the $20 million goal by Jan. 1, 2025.

“Individual donors continue to be the most significant number of and type of donor that we have,” she said, adding, “74 percent of those are Iowans who are giving, which I think is a really remarkable and very telling statistic. People in the state of Iowa care about Iowa’s only presidential library. They care about preserving our history.”

Other contribution streams flow from grants and private foundations.

Initial plans called for closing the museum after the August celebration, but the final temporary exhibition, “Hoover 150: A Birthday Celebration,” will be on view in the William Quarton Gallery until the end of the year, and possibly a bit beyond, depending on when construction starts, said Aaron Scheinblum, the museum’s public affairs specialist.

Bids will be let and a construction firm will be selected in the final quarter of 2024, McCarty noted. The contractor will come on-site in January and, at some point in the first quarter of 2025, the museum’s public spaces will close until the renovations are completed around mid-2026.

Until then, “Ultimately, 2024 is a very special year, because it’s what would have been the 150th birthdays for Bert and Lou,” Scheinblum said about the couple, noting the staff refers to the president “affectionately as Bert.”

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First lady Lou Henry Hoover, born March 29, 1874, in Waterloo, also is in this year’s sesquicentennial spotlight. Even though the couple managed to live “very private lives in the world of public service,” Scheinblum said, as they grew older and became more involved with communities and organizations, especially those involving children, they “leaned into a little bit more of these public birthday celebrations. …

“They were humble people,” he said. “They did a lot of public service without getting recognition for it.”

With the confluence of the 150th birthdays and the shutdown of everything at the museum but the staff offices and research room, Scheinblum added the staff wanted to figure out a good way to honor the Hoovers, and “do something that will create a lasting impact before our museum changes forever.”

He said the temporary exhibit, full of memorabilia, was the brainchild of assistant curator Melanie Wier, who spent weeks poring over items in the collection.

“She was basically locked into our research room, looking through folders and pages and so many documents related to Bert and Lou and their birthday,” he said. “She was digging and digging, trying to find every single opportunity to leave stones turned rather than unturned. She did a tremendous job.”

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Renovation plans

When the galleries reopen, visitors of all ages will find something that speaks to them.

“However you learn — whether it be through reading, whether it be through a more visual way, through an auditory way, maybe you need to touch things — this will really use essentially all of the senses except taste,” Scheinblum said.

“So it’s allowing for information to be absorbed in a way that can reach everyone, rather than just one specific audience. It’s important for accessibility. I can’t (emphasize) enough it will be unrecognizable compared to what it looks like right now.”

“And certainly while the closure is never ideal for a presidential library or any museum,” McCarty said, “it’s going to result in such an incredible product that will be an opportunity for people to come back and learn and see something new and differently-presented about the Hoover story.

“I think people will be inspired when they go through the Presidential Museum, to really have kind of a new perspective on the Hoovers and on what (visitors) as individuals can do to be more like the Hoovers,” she added.

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The museum is a treasure trove of information and memorabilia, but on any given day, visitors will see .03 percent of its holdings, Scheinblum said. With the reconfiguration of the galleries, more items will be on display or rotated into the displays, but that still will just scratch the surface of the holdings.

On the road

And while the museum is closed, plans are underway to take some of those items on the road for discussions in public libraries and other spaces, Scheinblum said, so people still can see, hear and learn more about the Hoovers, their lives, their work, their impact on the world and their legacies.

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“I think history books don’t tell the Hoover story the way that the Hoover story needs to be told,” Scheinblum said. “Herbert Hoover is known as the Great Humanitarian because of the work that he did and the lives that he impacted, not just locally, but around the world. This is a person that led food relief efforts that fed people in Belgium (and) in northern France. Six million people a day were fed due to his food relief efforts.

“And then even after he left the White House, he found a variety of ways to impact the community, and he found a way to work with people regardless of their backgrounds. …

“There's much more to this man than four years in the White House,” Scheinblum said.

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