Spiegel Grove

Rutherford B. Hayes's uncle and surrogate father, Sardis Birchard, began developing the wooded estate he called Spiegel Grove — German for "mirror," after ponds that once reflected the surrounding trees — in 1863, intending it for Hayes's family. Hayes inherited the property when Birchard died in 1874, and after leaving the presidency in 1881 he undertook a major expansion that more than doubled the original house into a 25-room Victorian mansion, which became his primary home for the rest of his life.

Hayes kept meticulous diaries and papers throughout his public career, unusually systematic record-keeping for a 19th-century politician, and his son Webb Hayes was determined to preserve them after Hayes's death in 1893. Webb spearheaded construction of a dedicated library and museum on the Spiegel Grove grounds, completed in 1916 and formally designated by the state of Ohio as the Hayes Memorial Library — making it, decades before Franklin Roosevelt's Hyde Park library, the first presidential library in the United States, though built and run by the state rather than the federal government.

Hayes is buried on the estate grounds alongside his wife, Lucy Hayes, remembered as "Lemonade Lucy" for banning alcohol service in the White House during his administration. The family later donated the entire property to the state of Ohio, which operates it today as the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library & Museums. Hayes had the house wired for electricity during his post-presidential renovations and was, fittingly for a man so interested in new technology, the first president to have both a telephone and a typewriter installed in the White House.