STRUCTURES : Reagan Monument : The new library sits atop a hill, in a setting of natural poetry--but that doesn’t necessarily translate to the entire experience of the place.

To reach the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, you wend your way up Presidential Drive to a dramatic hilltop site, with vistas of rolling hillsides of Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley. On a clear day, you can see the ocean. When an almost full moon beams in an afternoon sky, as it did last week, and the sunset turns the sky shades of pink and orange off beyond the monolithic slab of the Berlin Wall outside the library, a certain tranquil glow is cast over the place.

All in all, this is not at all a bad spot to commemorate your political legacy, as Reagan has, and to plan your final resting place. Ronald and Nancy Reagan will be buried here, next to a chunk of the Berlin Wall.

The inherent natural poetry of the setting doesn’t necessarily translate to the rest of the Reagan library experience, however.

Depending on your political perspective and cultural bent, a trip through the museum can be an inspiring tribute to “the Great Communicator” or an absurdist fun zone of Disneyfied homage, an amusing adventure in pomp, circumstance and large deposits of kitsch. Not to mention whitewash.

Every effort is made to present a portrait of Ronald Reagan as the Everyman leader, who rose to the top by providence, from Midwestern roots to Hollywood to Sacramento to Washington--or, in short, from Main Street, U.S.A., to Presidential Drive. This reviewer kept thinking of the “Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln” presentation at Disneyland, but minus the animated dummy.

The tale told by the museum also misses, or downplays, the darker side of the Reagan years: the Iran-Contra scandal and the unraveling of the nation’s savings-and-loan industry, for instance.

In the gift shop, you’ll find more Reagan memorabilia than you thought imaginable. You can browse over postcards, T-shirts, coffee mugs, towels, pocket knives, presidential china, his autobiography, selected speech texts (also available on cassette tape) and Nancy’s memoir, “My Turn.”

There is also a gift box of “the Gipper’s Favorite Foods,” such all- American staples as jellybeans, chicken noodle soup, Hershey chocolate bars and macaroni and cheese. This may seem a bit much. Then again, alongside the cultural contents of the museum proper--all that emphasis on the American Everyman theme--the package makes perfect sense.

Architecturally, it shouldn’t be surprising that the design, by the Boston-based Stubbins Associates, paints a picture of conservatism. The plans are abidingly stolid and unpretentious, with minimal detailing or geometric deviations. The scheme is based on the idea of three wings and a wide gate enclosing a large square in the middle.

Unlike the more style-conscious Carter library in Atlanta, the byword here is foursquare. There’s nary a post-modernist tic in sight.

The Reagan library was built over the course of three years at a cost of $57 million, raised from private sources, and is the latest of nine presidential libraries run by the National Archives. While half of the complex is devoted to the rambling Reagan museum, the actual library section makes available to visitors and researchers more than 6 million pages of material. Over the next generation or two, more than 40 million more pages are to come.

In keeping with the territory and also Reagan’s ranch north of Santa Barbara, the basic style is Mission, with red tile roofs, stucco, concrete pillars galore and military olive green trim. The wings are arranged in a square and anchored to a square tower-like form in the corner, where the multipurpose room sits.

In a sense, the library fits in with its surroundings. Simi Valley is a bedroom community filled with houses speaking in the same generic Spanish Revival vocabulary used at the Reagan library. (None of them, of course, have this view.)

Traditionally, the Mediterranean architectural style is thought to convey warmth and temperateness, as opposed to, say, the neoclassical hauteur of Reagan’s former home, the White House. (A fascinating White House replica, built over 30 years by John and Jan Zweifel of Orlando, Fla., stands in the library’s multipurpose room.)

But the library’s massive enclosure triggers other associations--a military compound, an honor farm, a monastery, a mission, or an elaborate hacienda from this area’s Rancho period of a century past. Generally, the design is forbidding and not very friendly. Even when the designers toss in an ornamental touch from beyond the Mission period--the central fountain is stocked with beautiful koi--the feature seems like an afterthought and the atmosphere remains chilly.

In a film on the Reagan years, seen in the screening room just before the row of galleries, the former President suggests that “you have temporary custody” of the presidency. But the notion of a presidential library is based on a different idea. The Reagan library will presumably stand forever, aiming to validate his place in history.