“Over
five years ago President Harding requesting his successor in the United States
Senate, Senator Willis of Ohio, to secure the passage of an act presenting the
[White House] gates to the Spiegel Grove State Park, but which, through
unaccountable bungling in the preparation of the original bill as well as the
omission of the proposed beneficiary from the act, has recently come to
naught.”
–Colonel
Webb Cook Hayes to Edna M. Colman, April 27, 1927
The White House Gates
by
by
Meghan Wonderly
Annual Giving and Membership Coordinator
Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library and Museums
Annual Giving and Membership Coordinator
Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library and Museums
Colonel Webb Cook Hayes, second son of President
Hayes, founded the Hayes Presidential Library and Museums in 1916. As construction
began on the addition to the museum, Webb turned his sights towards the
entrances to Spiegel Grove. He wanted every aspect of the site to be
historically relevant. While the grounds themselves were historically
important, the entrances to them were not. Webb sought something that would
signal to visitors that they were entering a prestigious historical site.
Webb’s quest to find the perfect gates for Spiegel
Grove began in 1920. Upon learning that the gates to the Soldiers Home in Washington
D.C. were to be removed, Webb requested the gates from the governor of the
Soldiers Home. The governor happened to be his former commander Lieutenant General S.B.M. Young. After his appeal to Young dragged on, Webb sought other
possible gates.
However, the matter soon grew complicated. President
Harding found that it required congressional approval and was out of his hands.
As
a staff correspondent for the Cincinnati Times-Star
newspaper stated, “There the
trouble started.” Harding wrote to Ohio
Senator Frank B. Willis, “I told Colonel Hayes I would be glad to
have the Museum (State Park) possess these gates and thought I could do so by
Executive Order. I have learned that this is not possible, however, and that
the donation must be made by act of Congress.” Therefore
in 1922, Harding handed the matter to Willis. Through Willis’s initiative, a
bill was created to remove the gates and send them to Spiegel Grove. The Senate
and its Committee on Military Affairs approved the bill.
 |
| The White House gates originally stood on West Executive Avenue between the White House and the State, War, and Navy building. The emblem that can be seen on the center set of gates features an anchor for the Navy department, guns for the War department, and an eagle for the State department |
With this positive news, the Fremont area citizens
began celebrating. A slightly overzealous Webb paid $2,500 to enlist Charles
Mosser of Fremont, Ohio, to build massive split boulder gateways to hold the
White House gates. Carl Rakemann, an artist friend of Webb’s, began designing
the plaques for the dedication of the gates. The Green Springs [Ohio] Echo and the Fremont News both published articles congratulating Webb and
Spiegel Grove on the accession of the gates.
However, the bill had yet to pass through the House
of Representatives. Ohio Congressman James T. Begg was put in charge of this
task. He encountered resistance in presenting the bill, even though it had been
approved by the Committee on Buildings & Grounds. At
first representatives questioned if it had even been decided that the gates
were to be removed. Begg read a letter from Colonel Sherrill (the Commissioner
of Buildings & Grounds), stating that various government offices involved
had attempted to remove the gates for several years due to the great congestion
of traffic at that avenue. Sherrill explained that:
An effort was made to find someone who
would pay something to the Government for the privilege of taking the gates
away, but it was found that no one would pay for the privilege and on the
contrary they expected us not only to give them the gates but to pay someone
for taking them away.
Sherrill’s explanation
did little to sway the politicians.
Members
of the House of Representatives argued that the gates provided the president
much needed security even though they had generally been considered a hazard to
safety. The failing came when Begg stated that the bill was “for the purpose of
permitting the President to give away Government property.” He also stated that
Harding was a “very good friend” of Webb C. Hayes. With these statements, the
bill lost its momentum.
Webb
believed that the failure was Begg’s fault. He wrote to other representatives
and senators asking for assistance. Most of those he wrote to assured him of
Begg’s competence. The Speaker of the House Frederick H. Gillett told Webb that
he was annoyed with Begg because of his attempts to use “unparliamentary methods.”
Begg defended his efforts, citing Webb’s misunderstanding of congressional
procedure. The bill was considered private, meaning that it could only be
brought up on certain days for discussion. A private bill also had to pass
unanimously. Throughout 1922 Begg struggled to get the bill on the calendar and
to combat any objections.
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| The White House gates now sit at each entrance to Spiegel Grove. |
Two
years passed with almost no mention of the gates. It took the Secretary of
War’s intervention in 1924 to get the bill back on the calendar. In early 1925,
the bill returned to the senate. This
time the chair of the Senate, along with other senators, were against
Willis. One senator even wanted the
gates to go to New York instead of Ohio. A week later, a journalist for the
Cincinnati Times-Star newspaper
released an article about the conundrum titled: “Useless
White House Gates Suddenly Become Important: Gift Made by Harding for Marker
for President Hayes’s Grave Again Held up by Skeptical Congress.” The witty and sardonic author wrote that:
When Colonel
Webb Hayes…came to Washington recently to carry away the White House gates, he
ran into more opposition than he had expected.
He thought he was going to do the Government a favor, but he discovered
that some members of the Government were not backward about calling it
something else.
The author continued,
stating that “[Webb] offered to take the gates off the hands of the Government,
or more specifically off their hinges, without cost to the Government.” The author then
quipped, “When a bill was presented in Congress some of the legislators, who
had, up until that time, never noticed the gates, asked some questions so as to
learn where they were, and then decided that the Government might want these
gates after all.”
The
next time the bill came up in the Senate and the House, the portion dictating
where the gates were to be sent was removed. Even with the change, the
Committee on Public Buildings & Grounds once again strongly recommended
passing the bill. They stated that the gates “have long been a serious
impediment to traffic and are a constant source of danger, both to vehicles and
pedestrians.” Again, the House of Representatives did not heed the committee’s
advice. Rather, they objected whenever the bill was brought up, stating that
“it would be a waste of time to consider it further” and that “those are
valuable gates and ought not to be torn down.” The Committee on Public
Buildings & Grounds were again given the bill, which they again approved.
They stressed that the gates had no material or intrinsic value, regardless of
what the senators and congressmen believed. The committee also emphasized that
if the gates were kept up “provision must be made for some expenditure on them
for repairs.”
 |
| Carl
Rakemann, artist and friend of Webb Cook Hayes, included sketches of gatepost
possibilities in a letter dated February 7, 1922. |
In
April of 1926 the Senate approved the bill.
However, Senator Wesley L. Jones from Washington interrupted the
proceedings and said, “My attention was diverted for a moment, and I did not
realize that…bill…had been passed.” He argued that the bill be reconsidered and
put on the calendar again, since he did not agree with its passage. When the
bill came up again for discussion, an argument ensued. Senator Royal S.
Copeland from New York, who had previously wanted the gates to come to his
state, argued with Jones about the gates’ removal:
It is not my
bill, and I have only the interest in it that any other Senator would have, but
I think those gates are a very great menace there in an automobile accident,
and I would not want to have the Senate assume the responsibility for something
that may be, after all, purely a matter of sentiment so far as the retention of
the gates is concerned.
The
discussion spiraled out of control. Other Senators jumped in to voice their
opinions. It became so heated that they had to be called to order. The next
time the bill was discussed, Jones recommended it be reviewed by a committee,
since it was technically different than the one they had previously reviewed.
This caused a debate amongst the Senators about which committee should review
the bill, the District Committee or the Buildings & Grounds. It went to
Buildings & Grounds for the fifth time.
Finally, the Senate agreed on an
amendment to the bill that would allow the gates’ removal but would not remove
the piers to which they were attached. Congressman Richard Elliott from Indiana
joined in the fray because he deemed the removal of gates but not the piers as
“nothing short of idiocy” because the piers were just as much behind the
traffic impediments as were the gates. This left the bill stuck between two
politicians who wanted very different outcomes. Therefore, the House and Senate
had to hold a conference to discuss the Senate’s proposed amendment to the
bill. The conference was fruitless, ending with the two factions agreeing to
disagree.
Elliott ended his determined efforts
to remove the piers and urged the House to agree with the amendments. So on
March 3, 1927, an act was passed that would authorize the removal of the gates
from West Executive Avenue as long as the piers were left undisturbed. After
five or so years of effort, the bill that had been approved simply permitted
the gates’ removal but did not secure them for Spiegel Grove. The Fremont Daily News reported, “Congress
has passed an act which merely states that the gates shall be removed, but
doesn’t specify to what place.” Webb
saw this as “rather stupid bill” that was badly handled by the Ohio
representatives. Aware of Webb’s frustration, Willis explained to the colonel
that he thought it was best to take what they could get and accept this small
victory.
Congressman Begg explained that the
gates now had to go out to bid for removal and possession, but that the
Chairman of the General Supply Committee was going to try his best to ensure
the gates went to Ohio. The General Supply Committee was chaired
by Colonel Ulysses S. Grant III, grandson of the former president and son of
Webb’s comrade Frederick Grant. Aware of
connections between Grant and himself, Webb wrote to him asking for assistance
in securing the gates. Grant replied that there was no legal way for him to
give the gates to Spiegel Grove. The committee was forced to invite bids for
the gates, since they had to be sold as junk.
Difficulties arose as
“Washington people have all at once gotten the idea that these gates are
exceedingly important to Washington.” Webb’s bid for the
gates unfortunately fell $1,050 below the highest offer. Willis wrote Webb that there was some insistence
that the gates be erected at one of the Washington parks. F.A.
Roman, a local attorney, made the winning bid.
Newspapers rumored that the Fine Arts Commission was behind his bid, as
they desired the gates to remain in Washington D.C. In April of 1927 the Fremont Daily News released an article stating that Webb had lost
the bid for the gates. The paper bemoaned the loss,
stating:
The six year request of Colonel Webb C.
Hayes of Fremont for the possession of the ancient White House gates at the
Pennsylvania avenue entrance to West Executive Avenue apparently ended in
failure Monday when bids were opened by the treasury and his offer was found to
be considerably below another submitted.
However, the bid had to
be approved by certain treasury heads before the gates could be given away.
In 1928, Begg went to bat for Webb
again, this time to ensure the gates be presented to the Ohio Archaeological
and Historical Society so they could hang at Spiegel Grove. The Committee on
Public Buildings and Grounds reviewed the bill. They suggested an amendment,
removing the preamble of the bill which simply explained the historical nature
of Spiegel Grove. The House passed the bill. The Senate also passed the bill
after its Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds amended it to ensure the
federal government would incur no expense for the gates’ removal. At last, on
April 11, 1928, the bill passed and was approved by President Coolidge,
securing the gates’ donation to the OHC for historical entrances to Spiegel
Grove. The Anchor Fence Company removed the gates from the White House and
shipped them to Fremont in mid May 1928.
 |
Webb wanted to christen the gates at
the annual Memorial Day festivities at Spiegel Grove, but the gates’ poor
condition required some maintenance before they could be erected. The Fremont Steam Boiler Company, operated by
the Nickel brothers, worked with the Fremont Foundry to repair the gates.
Therefore the celebration of the gates’ installation was postponed until August
2, to coincide with the 115th anniversary of the Battle of Fort
Stephenson. Webb coordinated the event to include the dedication of the nurses’
home at the Fremont Memorial Hospital and the christening of a
tree in honor of
Theodore Burton, a trustee of the Rutherford B. and Lucy Webb Hayes Foundation.
After
eight years of persistence, the gates were finally brought home to Spiegel
Grove. They were laid out exactly how Webb had imagined in 1922, with four of
the White House gates installed in four gateways, and the fifth divided to make
two single pedestrian gates. The gates have remained in that configuration ever
since.
 |
| A Son's Dream: Colonel Webb C. Hayes and the Founding of the Nation's First Presidential Library by Meghan Wonderly |
To learn more about Colonel Webb C. Hayes and the founding of the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library and Museums, you can purchase a copy of Meghan's book online or in the Museum Store
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