James A. Garfield National Historic Site

Take the tour!! It's well worth it. Honestly better than I expected. The guide was fantastic. The house is beautiful and despite having only been president for about 8 months, Garfield is an interesting figure, his wife Lucretia as well. Definitely stop here and check it out, it's a great site.

Be sure to take the time to do the guided tour of the home. Thanks to the historical society they have done a fantastic job in restoring this home. Very informative.

There is also a small museum in the visitor center that has a 20 minute video definitely worth your time.

I visited the James A. Garfield National Historic Site on 30 May. The site preserves the Lawnfield estate where Garfield lived, where he conducted his "front porch campaign," and where his widow Lucretia Garfield kept all of his papers, setting the precedent for presidential libraries - though these papers were not available to the public until the early twentieth century when his descendants donated them to the Library of Congress. According to our guide, 80% of the furnishings are either original to the house or the property of the Garfield family.

The museum about Garfield's life is a good introduction to the man who became the 20th President and is currently located in the old carriage house building. After viewing the exhibits and watching a short film, we toured the house itself. Our guide described scenes from Garfield's and his family's life in the relevant rooms, pointing out artifacts of interest and answering questions. It was a nice, quick stop to visit for about an hour as I passed through time.

Beautiful historic site in Mentor. Ohio! It is one of the first unofficial Presidential libraries. Make sure to take the free tour to get access to his actual house. The staff are super friendly and very informative. The gift shop is a little small but they have an okay selection of souvenirs. Takes about 2 hours or so with the tour but definitely worth a visit if you're in the area and school age kids (kids 5 and older) will definitely like it. Make sure to also do the junior ranger program to get a free prize!

Our fam' has become more interested in presidential history lately, and checking out relevant historic sites. So on a recent road trip to the Cleveland area (we're from Buffalo NY), we decided to take in some Garfield history. There are three historic sites all within about a half hour of each other: his birthplace, his later home, and his gravesite. We made it to the first two on this trip, Garfield's home and National Historic Site being our second stop.

We stopped in here on the way home on Sunday, with about an hour and a half until the site closed at 5pm. There is a large parking lot, with a clean public restroom building. We knew we weren't going to tour the house this time, as that requires a reservation and additional cost. But the Information Center building has plenty to keep you occupied for a while. The building that houses the information center was originally actually Garfield's stable house. The kind and knowledgeable ranger working the desk showed us the stall wall where Molly, the president's favorite horse, actually kicked in a hole.

The information center has a wonderfully curated museum loop, with several interactive and audio exhibits. As your walking along, the various scenes of Garfield's life light up and a recording explains the significance. At the end of the museum loop is a theater. We did not watch the video during this visit, but when we come back to tour the mansion someday we will. All of these exhibits are free to the public.

In addition to the museum, there is a nice gift shop. At the Rutherford B. Hayes house over the summer we bought some presidential placemats, but they weren't updated yet for Biden. The Garfield giftshop had the updated placemats, so we upgraded! The gift shop also had an assortment of Edgar Allen Poe gifts. Apparently Garfield was a scholar and admirer of Poe, with many of his works in his personal library in the mansion. Gift shop prices weren't too bad. I also snagged a magnet, and snuck in a deck of presidential playing cards without my kids seeing for a Christmas gift.

If you are interested in exploring James Garfield presidential history, here are the Cleveland area sites:

Birthplace Cabin: https://www.yelp.com/biz/president-james-garfield-birthplace-cabin-moreland-hills

Home & National Historical Site: https://www.yelp.com/biz/james-a-garfield-national-historic-site-mentor

Gravesite: https://www.yelp.com/biz/garfield-memorial-cleveland

In addition to Garfield, Ohio is LUSH in presidential history, with six presidents hailing from Ohio, and a couple more with deep ties to the state. Lots to explore in Ohio if US presidents are also your jam! :-D

This Garfield Historic Site information center sits back off of the road, with the house right on the road. On our way out, we pulled over to take a few photos of the outside of the mansion. We hope to visit again to tour the mansion itself, as well as walk around some of the other outbuildings when the weather is nicer. A great stop here to learn more about this fascinating, and unfortunately short-lived American president.

House is a great site for someone visiting the area. Inside the guide building there is a little gift shop and some exhibits of Garfield's including some clothing, shoes and jewelry. I love the events they sometimes have at the Garfield House (Poe is always a fun one Halloween time).

Turns out there's a national park site for almost every president there's ever been. One of those is James Garfield - a president I knew absolutely nothing about until coming here. Now I feel like I know all there is to know.

First off, this beautiful historical house is the absolute perfect place to house the museum. It preserves an extra special part of this front porch president's career. Oh, if only he'd given that guy a job things might've ended up different. Instead we got one of the shortest presidential terms.

The museum and the house tour does a great job of bringing a lot of glory to a rather short and lackluster political career. You can learn a lot about his family, in particular his incredibly intelligent and influential wife, and about his childhood. In his teen years, he was very into the macabre and goth lifestyle.

It's worth a visit if you live nearby, but I wouldn't go out of your way. Also, it has a small fee - reasonable considering upkeep - but avoidable with the annual pass.

This place is pretty interesting. I wasn't really sure what to expected but I was pleasantly surprised about how entertaining the experience was. I'm really sad the house was closed, but we did a virtual walk through which was nice and our Ranger was very insightful and really made the experience fun. While there are no fees to enter the park, the tours of the house are 10$ when they are actually available - just an FYI.

As of right now the hours per their website are 8-4:30 everyday. We had no problems with that and really enjoyed everything we were able see and learn about in the Visitors Center.

(This visit was made during the times of Covidious back in late May. When things return to a look of normality - your experience likely will vary.
Double note that when we visited the grounds had recently reopened but the visitors center would be closed until July 1st and the house itself is still closed.)

Oh, Mr. Garfield, what a president you could have been. Sadly at this point in time he is barely a historical footnote and his house is one of the lessor known C-List NPS sites even though both shouldn't be that way.

Husband
Father
Teacher
Attorney
Major General in the Union Army during the Civil War
Reluctant politician

He was cut from the mold of our founding fathers from the 18th century where he was seemingly good at everything he tried and lived at a time where raw intelligence and the right connections could still take you as far as you wanted to go rather easily.

As most/some may know that the thing history remembers Garfield for primarily is that he was assassinated while he was President. Those were different times when the Secret Service didn't exist, the president's schedule was widely published in advance and the spoils system still was in play where you could just show up unannounced at The White House and beg/grovel for a federal job with the president directly. All of the above led in some form to Garfield's assassination along with the malpractice of the head physician on site amongst others poking around the bullet entry wound with dirty fingers/instruments.
www.history.com/news/the-assassination-of-president-james-a-garfield

Back to the house. While it would have been great to have taken a tour, the grounds themselves are small and well kept. The below map shows what is there but you will have to use your imagination as to what it looked like in Garfield's day with considerably more space for farming, not being encased by homes on every side and having a clear path for being able to commute directly to the train station which is something he valued highly.
www.nps.gov/jaga/cell-phone-tour.htm

One bit of Garfield the politician is still relevant to this day. His house was known and to a degree is still known as Lawnfield due to his reluctance at campaigning. His front porch campaigning is more or less the playbook that Biden is following to this day.

Compared to an NPS site closer to me in Valley Forge that last year saw more than two million visitors, Garfield NHS saw less than 50K. Does that make it any less worthy of a visit? Not at all. I've been to quite a few NPS sites and usually the ones that are smaller and more off the beaten path are more approachable where you can cover them in one visit. Hopefully next time the house will be open and we can get the full experience.

Cool place if you are a presidential history kind of person. Nice place to stop on Presidents Day. Looks like they had some activities planned.