Stellar storytelling

March 20, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

Ohio sites attest to Garfield presidency cut short

McClatchy Newspapers

MENTOR, Ohio

James A. Garfield was not president very long. Only 200 days.

Maybe that’s why the Ohio native is so often overlooked and ignored.

But you can learn about the 20th president of the United States at two sites in Northeast Ohio: Lawnfield, Garfield’s 30-room house, at the James A. Garfield National Historic Site in Mentor, and at the castle-like Garfield Monument where Garfield and his wife, Lucretia, are buried at Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland.

Garfield was elected president in November 1880 and took office in March 1881. He was shot on July 2, 1881, by a disappointed office- seeker, Charles Guiteau, at a train station in Washington. The 49-year-old Garfield died Sept. 19.

What makes Lawnfield so impressive is that 80 percent of the decorations and furnishings belonged to the family: Garfield, his wife, his mother and seven children, two of whom died as youngsters. Only the textiles and rugs have been re-created.

Visitors are looking at Garfield family items, books and artifacts, not the period pieces that too often fill historical buildings.

Plus, the National Park Service does a stellar job telling the Garfield story at a small visitor center-museum and on 35-minute guided tours of the dark gray house with gables, spires and a red-tiled roof.

Lawnfield offers a genuine Garfield look and feel that is impressive.

Items you will see range from a chair in Garfield’s second-floor office with a high side and a low side. Obviously, the chair was designed for one to sit and slip the legs over the side.

There are framed drawings and paintings done by Lucretia Garfield and the couple’s children, including fireplace tiles in the first-floor dining room.

More than 4,000 of Garfield’s original books are found throughout the house.

The first floor includes an entrance hall, main hall, the summer bedroom shared by the Garfields, the bedroom of his mother, Eliza Ballou Garfield, a reception hall, a parlor, a nurse’s room and a dining room and kitchen.

The second floor includes additional bedrooms, the president’s study, the library and several other rooms.

Three of Lawnfield’s first-floor rooms — the dining room, parlor and the summer bedroom (later a smoking room) — have been restored to reflect 1880, when the president lived there.

The most impressive room in Lawnfield is the second-floor library. The room, with its red-painted walls, big windows and ceiling beams and wall panels of white oak, is filled with Garfield’s law books.

There is an 1873 seat used by members of Congress, plus a Wooten desk with more than 100 compartments in the bright and airy library. The room includes brass gaseliers, a piano and a fireplace.

Off the library is a walk-in vault where Garfield’s presidential papers could be safely stored.

The library and vault were added in 1885-86 after Garfield’s death by his wife as a memorial. In effect, she created the first presidential library.

Other items on display in Lawnfield include Garfield’s Civil War equipment, his presidential china and a waxed wreath England’s Queen Victoria sent to commemorate Garfield’s death.

The front porch and a small building next to the main building are also noteworthy.

He entertained an endless stream of visitors in the house and spoke from the porch to large crowds.

Lawnfield got its name from reporters who camped out on a side lawn during the campaign. Garfield had simply called the property the Mentor Farm.

He used one of the outbuildings, a small one- story library building, as his campaign headquarters. He equipped it with a telegraph, and that’s how he learned he had won the presidential election.

Garfield, an enthusiastic farmer, bought the Mentor farmhouse and 188 acres in 1876. Forty acres were added later.

The farmhouse had been built in 1832 by James Dickey. It was originally a small 11/2-story frame structure. Garfield and his wife enlarged it to 21/2 stories with a front porch across the front and refurbished the interior from 1877 to 1879. The number of rooms jumped from nine to 20.

Lawnfield remained in the Garfield family until 1936, when it was donated to the Western Reserve Historical Society. In 1980, the society turned the property over to the federal government.

In the 1990s, the government spent $12.5 million to restore the complex. That included re-creating 10 original wallpaper patterns within the house. The federal government assumed full control of the site in January 2008 from the historical society.

Today, Lawnfield encompasses 7.82 acres and eight buildings, including an 1893 carriage-house-turned-visitor-center and a 75-foot-tall windmill.

For more information, contact the Garfield National Historic Site, 8095 Mentor Ave., Mentor, Ohio 44060; 440-255-8722; www.nps.gov/jaga.

cemetery

Historic Lake View cemetery on 285 acres is Garfield’s final resting place.

The building with its tower and turreted roof sits atop a hill with views of Cleveland’s University Circle area and Lake Erie.

The building is 180 feet tall and includes an observation deck.

The Garfield National Memorial Association raised $135,000 for the monument after Garfield’s death. The structure was completed in 1890.

The building, on the National Register of Historic Places, includes a marble statue of Garfield in the main-floor Memorial Hall with stained-glass windows, rich gold mosaics and marble and granite columns.

In the basement crypt are the bronze coffins containing the bodies of Garfield and his wife and urns with the ashes of daughter Molly Garfield Stanley-Brown and her husband, Joseph Stanley-Brown, Garfield’s one-time secretary.

Five terra-cotta panels on the exterior of the monument depict scenes from Garfield’s life.

For more information, contact the cemetery at 12316 Euclid Ave., Cleveland, Ohio 44106; 216-421-2665; www.lakeviewcemetery.com.