National Portrait Gallery (Smithsonian Institution)

President Roosevelt tells Abby Gunn Baker that he feels that Lyon Gardiner Tyler should write to the White House to offer the portrait, and that it wouldn’t be proper for them to write to him asking for a gift. Roosevelt approves of the plan to hang the portrait, but the initiative should come from Tyler. Roosevelt refutes what Baker mentioned in her letter of a plan between Robert Underwood Johnson and Glenn Brown to add another story on the East Terrace of the White House in order to house a portrait gallery there. Roosevelt thinks doing this would be a great mistake architecturally, and says that while the White House can hold portraits of presidents and first ladies, others belong in the National Portrait Gallery.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1908-12-05

Fourteen topics across eleven pages comprise this edition of the “News and Notes” section. The section covers some of the Theodore Roosevelt Association’s (TRA) annual awards, including police awards, and the public speaking contests in and around New York City. It highlights the passing of Sarah Alden Derby Gannett, a grand daughter of Theodore Roosevelt, author Michael Teague, and Teddie R. Bell Kaltenbacher, a girl famously named after Roosevelt. “News and Notes” also provides updates on the effort to secure Roosevelt the Medal of Honor, the schedule for the “Theodore Roosevelt: Icon of the American Century” exhibit of the National Portrait Gallery, and production of the index for volume XXII of the TRA Journal.

Six photographs, three from the police award ceremonies, two from the speaking contests, and one of the Gannett family, supplement the text.

Collection

Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal

This section of the journal covers twelve topics including a brief report on the 1998 annual meeting which saw the conferring of the Theodore Roosevelt Distinguished Service Medal to former President George Bush and his wife Barbara Bush. It also highlights a revival of the play Bully! starring actor John Davidson, the results of a survey of historians rating twentieth-century presidents, and the opening of an exhibition on Theodore Roosevelt at the National Portrait Gallery. “News and Notes” also discusses whether Roosevelt believed in the legend of a Sasquatch or Bigfoot creature, relays news from the The Friends of Sagamore Hill cooperating association, and notes the launching of a Theodore Roosevelt Association (TRA) website. The section closes with a listing of the members of the executive committee of the TRA along with the members of the Board of Trustees classes of 1999, 2000, and 2001, and with a text box indicating that this issue of the journal is dedicated to P. James Roosevelt. 

 

Five photographs of President Bush at the annual meeting appear in the section. 

President Roosevelt holds a sword while he rides a hobbyhorse. Caption: By permission, From the catalog of the National Portrait Gallery, for the year 2000 A.D. The portrait is described, tongue-in-cheek, as depicting “the young Prince of Oyster Bay,” who “was born to the purple, but renounced it in order to purify his country. having finished that, his great hobby was to be photographed on horseback–thousands of such records being in existence.” The gallery description continues, saying “there is some question as to whether he did not paint this masterpiece himself–on the theory that there was nothing, in his own opinion, that he could not do.”

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1903-11-05