Horseshoe Design Revealed for Nixon Library Project

With buildings of limestone, sandstone and tile arrayed in a horseshoe around a pool, the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda will be a quiet final showcase for the tumultuous career of the nation’s 37th chief executive.

Plans for the $25-million complex were revealed after the Yorba Linda City Council voted Tuesday to declare the 6-acre grounds a historical site and approved an environmental impact report.

Huge glass windows on the connected buildings will face inward on a reflecting pool, and a terraced lawn will lead down to the wood-frame house where Nixon was born 75 years ago. Trellised gardens will surround the library grounds.

The architectural plans, by the Newport Beach offices of Langdon Wilson Mumper, created about as much stir in Yorba Linda as the November decision to build the library on the former President’s family homestead.

No Opposition So Far

“No one has shown up in the public meetings to oppose it,” city Planning Director Phillip Paxton said. “It seems to me the most popular project we have had.”

The two-level complex--with red tile roofs, 275 parking spaces and no windows facing outward--will resemble a modest museum as much as anything. And indeed, it will include a museum, as well as offices, a theater, an exhibit room and air-controlled document storage rooms.

“The outside has a look that acknowledges the office of the President of the United States,” said Bruce M. Cook, senior planner for the city. “The inside is serene and reflective.”

Final approval is expected when the city Planning Commission meets Wednesday to review and vote on the architectural plans. Paxton said he foresees no hurdles.

Nixon Expected to Attend

Ground breaking is scheduled for November. Nixon is expected to attend.

Ironically, Nixon’s presidential library will contain no official papers from his six years as President. Instead, it will house his vice presidential papers, personal papers since he has left office, book manuscripts and White House diaries.

After the Watergate scandal--in which Nixon was named as an unindicted co-conspirator on criminal charges and was forced to resign--Congress passed an act that gives custody of 44 million pages of his official presidential papers and 4,000 hours of taped recordings to the National Archives. The act also requires that those items remain in Washington while classified information is removed.

In May, Nixon met in San Clemente with officials of the Richard Nixon Presidential Archives Foundation, a nonprofit group based in Washington that is building the Yorba Linda library. He reportedly approved the final details and a scale model of the complex.

The foundation said it has raised the $25 million to build the library from private donors.

It will be built in two phases on the site that used to be home to the Richard M. Nixon Elementary School, which eventually became a day-care center. The city recently paid the school district $1.3 million for the land.

In its deal with the school district, the city agreed to relocate the day-care center and build a $2-million community center on the grounds of a former junior high school.

Just two lots remain in private hands on what used to be the original 9-acre Nixon family homestead. In the upper northwest corner of the parcel is the home of Edith Eichler, 93, who has lived there since the 1920s.

City officials created a stir when they announced their intention to acquire Eichler’s half-acre before anyone had notified her. However, she will be allowed to remain.

“Our long-range goal is to acquire it, but there is no intent now to purchase,” Paxton said Wednesday.

Purchase of the second parcel in the southeast corner of the original homestead is being negotiated and talks are expected to close soon, city officials said.

Originally, the library was to be built on a 16-acre bluff-top in San Clemente overlooking Casa Pacifica, the house Nixon used as his West Coast presidential retreat.

Those plans bogged down in delays and controversy when the Lusk Co. of Irvine made its donation of the library land conditional on city approval for a huge commercial and residential development along with the library on the bluff.

NIXON LIBRARY PLAN

The Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda will include red tile roofs, a reflecting pool and outdoor eating area, a museum, theater, exhibit room and 275 parking spaces. The two-level complex at Yorba Linda Boulevard and Eureka Avenue is expected to cost about $25 million. Ground breaking is set for November.