William Howard Taft National Historic Site's Very Unusual Visitor

Park Interpretation and the Story of One Very Unusual Visitor

Since its establishment in 1969, William Howard Taft National Historic Site has been challenged by limited space for doing interpretation. In the early days, interpretive rangers led visitors around the exterior of the house and had them peer in windows. During the long process of house restoration, they escorted visitors through the partially reconstructed interior to show them the “birth room.” When the restoration of the Taft home was finally completed in 1988, some rooms in the house were given to exhibits and others to public meeting rooms. But it was not until the Taft Education Center was built in 1999 that the Site had suitable facilities for doing interpretation. With the Center’s theater, classroom, and temporary exhibits gallery, it provided many more possibilities for interpretive activities. The addition of the Taft Education Center to the Site enabled interpretive staff to enlarge the Site’s interpretive offerings beyond the core element of house tours to include education programs, community outreach, special events, and other interpretation presented through various types of media.

One especially eye-catching temporary exhibit occurred with the brief loan, in 2013, of a wax figure of President William Howard Taft from Madame Tussauds Wax Museum in Washington, D.C. For just one day, the day of the annual Taft symposium, the amazing wax likeness of the 27^th U.S. president graced the lobby of the Taft Education Center. For a few days after that, it stood in the Taft Art Museum where it posed beneath a large portrait of the president’s older half-brother and museum’s namesake, Charles P. Taft.

The background to this exhibit was unusual. Years before, when Madame Tussauds in London embarked on making this wax figure for its collection of U.S. presidents for its museum in Washington, D.C., it sought to obtain Taft’s exact height and suit size. Of course, it was crucial that the figure should accurately reflect the famously fat president’s true rotundness and wide beam. Madame Tussauds called the Library of Congress, which in turn called the Cincinnati Public Library, which in turn called the National Historic Site. In this obscure quest for William Howard Taft’s exact measurements, NPS delivered. Taft’s height of five feet and eleven and a half inches was stated in an old insurance policy found in the Taft family papers. Taft’s clothing measurements were teased from his personal correspondence, as in one request for a supply of boxer shorts (size 50 from Pogue’s) sent to his personal attorney when he was governor of the Philippines. John Reusing, the librarian at the Cincinnati Public Library at that time, recalled this amusing bit of research when he later became president of the Friends of the William Howard Taft Birthplace. On a whim, Reusing called Madame Tussauds Wax Museum in Washington, D.C. to ask if the wax figure could be sent to Cincinnati on a special loan – as a tribute to Taft’s city of origin. The company agreed to do it if shipping costs were covered. Reusing got the Friends to cover those costs.

Madame Tussauds sent the figure by ground express. It arrived at the National Historic Site in an enormous wooden crate. The head was detached and stowed in a special bubble box. An employee of Madame Tussauds flew to Cincinnati to prepare the figure and respond to questions from the public. And there were a lot of questions from the public. The wax figure was a huge attraction and curiosity. On the Saturday in which it stood in the Taft Education Center the Site saw a record number of visitors.