Bill Clinton's library looks like a double-wide trailer up on cinder blocks. Clinton's library gets the fewest visitors of all presidential libraries according to the Ntl Archives which operates them.
Posted on 06/03/2026 12:22:26 PM PDT by DFG
The Egyptians had their pyramids. The Anglo-Saxons had their barrows. And the Americans have their presidential libraries – the chief difference being that the leaders the US venerates are usually still alive at the opening.
Lacking a royal family or a state religion, the US presidency has swelled to fill the void, transforming over the decades into a national personality cult, complete with its own secular temples to these powerful men. The latest pharaonic edifice is about to open on Chicago’s south side, where it looms on the skyline as a towering totem to the 44th president, Barack Obama. He might have seemed humble in office, but in his post-presidential, Netflix-producing afterlife, Obama has erected the largest, costliest and most audacious complex of them all. Behold the $850m Obamalisk – or, as it sometimes feels morbidly like, the Obamausoleum.
Previous presidential libraries have taken many forms, reflecting the values of their creators. Franklin D Roosevelt began the tradition in 1940, building a library in Dutch colonial style alongside his grave in upstate New York, which he hoped would be swarmed with “an appalling number of sightseers”. Since then, every president has followed suit in their quest for immortality, dreaming up ever larger museums and archives, conceived as hallowed places of pilgrimage. Lyndon B Johnson commissioned a brutalist hulk for Austin, Texas, a fitting symbol, its architect Gordon Bunshaft remarked, for “an aggressive … big man”. Ronald Reagan opted for a sprawling California hacienda, with a dedicated hangar for Air Force One, while Bill Clinton conjured a cantilevered metallic box in Arkansas – a literal interpretation of his promise to “build a bridge to the 21st century”.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
They laffed all the way to the bank!................
Is that the Pave Paws radar at Otis AFB? I toured that back in the 80s when I was in the AF.
Does it say “WIDE LOAD” on her backside?
haven’t seen the library but I’m sure it’s an eyesore taking up lots of wonderful land alongside Lakeshore Blvd.
Even putting aside as much partasanship as possible, that is, far and away, the ugliest most brutalist structure imaginable. How could anyone have looked at the drawings and plans and said, “Oh, yeah. We’re going with that!”
Bill Clinton's library looks like a double-wide trailer up on cinder blocks. Clinton's library gets the fewest visitors of all presidential libraries according to the Ntl Archives which operates them.
Has multiple courts. Midnight basketball? In that neighborhood?
lol.....no..... but it should.
It is a warning to future generations to avoid voting for marxists.
Besides the Kablah or whatever it is that Muslims trek to annually, yes.
I still have that album.
‘Like a Klingon prison’: inside Barack Obama’s audacious, near-windowless, $850m presidential library. It’s a beautiful building for a multi-story shit house.
Taking Frederick Law Olmsted’s excellent Jackson Park, home of the World Columbian Exposition, and turning it into Disney World landscaping. Cancelling American history, no doubt by intention. Just like building a mosque on the remains of a former church.
Maybe the worst design in the contest was sent to the construction crew by mistake.
That’s the best spin I can put in this.
One would assume 0 himself would have had the final say so it’s all on him.
Barry wants the library to look like something he is familiar with - a dark, windowless gay bathhouse.
“Whoever designed this monstrosity should give the money back.”
according to the article, obama, who claims to have always wanted to be an architect and bigly admired some Romanian abstract sculptor, had a BIG hand in the design!
lol
It’s a 1950’s East German apartment building.
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