The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Wilson's child home gets an interactive upgrade
Former president’s residence offers thenand-now perspectives.
The Boyhood Home of President Woodrow Wilson unveiled its new interactive exhibit in downtown Augusta — just in time for Presidents Day.
“Presidents Day is one of our biggest days, for both out-of-town tourists and locals,” said Samantha Hargrove, Historic Augusta’s programs and marketing director. “There are still so many in Augusta who don’t realize we have a presidential home here.”
It’s Georgia’s oldest presidential home, at 419 Seventh St., where America’s 28th president grew up from 1860 to 1870. His father, the Rev. Joseph Ruggles Wilson, pastored Augusta’s First Presbyterian Church.
Until now, the focus of the his- toric site centered almost exclusively on Wilson’s activities and struggles as a boy growing up during the Civil War and the Reconstruction-era South.
The new exhibit — 12 years in the making — traces Wilson’s entire life, including his leadership during World War I, his relationships with women, his position on race relations and his lifelong interest in baseball and golf.
One feature is t it led “Our Augusta and Woodrow Wilson’s Augusta.”
“It shows pictures of old buildings, then you flip the panel up and it shows if that building still exists, what that building looks like today or, if it’s not there, what that area looks like,” Hargrove said.
Plans for the permanent exhibit first emerged in 2006, with primary funding secured in the special purpose local option sales tax referendum adopted by voters in 2009. Then-Superior Court Judge Carlisle Overstreet and the Augusta Judicial Circuit provided matching funds. The Greater Augusta Arts Council and the Georgia Humanities Council also provided funding for the exhibit’s planning.
The next several years were spent assembling historical research and gathering the right photos and illustrations.
Theexhibit actually is housed next door at Historic Augusta’s headquarters, 415 Seventh St., which is the Boyhood Home of Joseph R. Lamar, a U.S. Supreme Court justice from 1910 to 1916. Visitors first tour the exhibit before being guided through the 14-room Wilson home.
“We really want to make it topnotch,” Hargrove said. “Our tours are given on the hour (and halfhour), so anyone who arrives early or a little late for one still has something to do while they wait for the next guided tour to start.”