The idea that his life’s papers might be displayed grandly offended Coolidge as the kind of “self-aggrandizement” he condemned in others. Coolidge approved of the National Archives and even backed a $1 million appropriation toward a structure to house the archives. But the modern concept of a large, federally funded presidential library he would have deemed inappropriate; if the public should pay for a presidential library, it should pay at the town or state level. State and town governments or private philanthropies were, in Coolidge’s opinion, the proper custodians of citizens’ materials,
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