Happy Birthday, TR! Today marks the 155th anniversary of the birth of Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), who was the 26th President of the United States (1901-1909). Here at the Museum, the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial celebrates his unmatched conservation legacy, which included placing some 230 million acres under federal protection.
In the Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda, monumental murals, which were completed in 1935 and restored in 2011-2012, depict some of his achievements, including his role in building the Panama Canal.
In the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Hall on the first floor, a sculpture of Roosevelt, depicted as he looked during a famous 1903 camping trip to Yosemite with naturalist John Muir, is the centerpiece of the newly re-opened gallery. And you can take a photograph with "him!"
Or learn about Roosevelt's extraordinary life, including this native New Yorker's early passion for nature.
It seems particularly fitting to celebrate Roosevelt's birthday, since his busy life so frequently meant that a birthday brought new accomplishments. As Edmund Morris notes in the acclaimed biography The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, Roosevelt was a published author at age 18; a husband at 22; a New York State Assemblyman at 23; a father and widower at 25; a ranchman at 26; a candidate for mayor of New York City at 27; a husband for the second time at 28. His career, wrote Morris, "gained further speed," so that he was governor of New York and a "Rough Rider" by age 39. Vice President of the United States in 1901, after the assassination of President William McKinley, Roosevelt became President at age 42, still the youngest president in the country's history.
Visit the Museum's Theodore Roosevelt Memorial, which opened after a renovation one year ago today.