Rutherford B Hayes Presidential Library & Museums

My fiancé and I loved our visit here. The porch was being painted so we were told to go to the «coach door» we couldn’t find right right a way so we walked around the outside of the house and found the coach garage. And then we found the door lol
We toured the house and enjoyed the original pics matched the rooms, and walked to the tomb and said thank you, and played with the squirrels, it was fun!!!

Visited here today with my two sons, ages 9 and 11. They are into history, had the day off of school, so I opted to go here to check it out as it is a 40 minute drive from our house.
I had really wanted to see the special exhibit: Civil War artifacts from the Confederate army camp that was on Johnson’s Island (near Marblehead). That exhibit was very cool and organized.
The overall Hayes info is very random and disorganized. There is no flow to the place. I had wanted to be told of his life story: birth, education, college/​military, marriage, kids, political career in chronological order. A timeline would help me get the gist of why the chosen artifacts are there in the museum. I have never been to a presidential museum (this was the first such museum in the US; who knew!), so I had no idea what to expect.
The house tour is separate, and the boys and I milled around the museum before going on a tour of the house. Little did we know that the tours are very regimented and only leave at certain times; ask at the museum desk to find out when the next one is. The tours are apparently 45 minutes long of the house. We did not complete a tour as we left to grab lunch then returned to the grounds for a house tour.
So, we returned at about 1:00 to look at the house. There is no signage on the porch explaining «wait here for next tour» or «next tour begins at xx time». This would be extremely helpful. They lock the door of the house while giving tours. the very rude tour guide came out to greet us after the 2^nd time we tried the locked door. She belittled us for not being in on the current tour («I was waiting for you» were her words). I didn’t know that the tours left at exact specified times. I explained to her that I didn’t know that, nor was it explained to me. I asked when the next tour was, and she stated in 30 minutes. I wasn’t about to wait that long, and I went back over to the museum to get my money back for the house portion.
I was given passes to return at a later date for the house tour. I explained that basic signage could have eliminated this issue of tour times. We will see if we return at some point to see the house.

This place is just freakin’ cool. My ADD and museums are not always quite cohesive, but this was a great place to visit. My Fremont-​based friend and I started off with a tour of the Hayes mansion followed by a jaunt through the museum itself.
The house is remarkable. The family opened it up to the public in the 60s, but having previously housed five generations of Hayes (es), they had nearly every piece of furniture and décor that had ever been in the house. Our tour guide was delightful, super knowledgeable and very helpful. You could really tell that she was passionate about passing along the history and that she enjoyed her job. She took us through the original farm house area, explained each of the additions, and took us through some of the 18 bedrooms and two of the four floors in the house. What I appreciated the most, and found very interesting, was that photos were taken while President Hayes was in residence at the home and between the pictures and the abundance of furniture, décor items and history, the house has been nearly restored to it’s Hayes-​era appearance.
The museum was interesting, featuring some additional Hayes family items — but I hesitate to admit that my friend and I most enjoyed the children’s dress up area that resulted in some interesting Facebook photo posts. :-)

Made a brief visit here to see a friend play old-​time baseball. The grounds are beautiful, and turned out to be a nice place for a ball game (with more trees than most ballparks have, but hey, they added to the drama.)
Went through the museum fairly quickly. It’s a decent small museum. Didn’t have time for the house, but it looked nice.

My friends wanted to come here for some culture and a sleigh ride the day after xmas while I was in town, so I obliged and made the trip out here to the country.
We were excited about the sleigh ride, which cost $ 3. But the disorganization of the whole affair was a nightmare. There was just a woman with a card table taking money, handing out tickets, and writing our names on a list. Though these rides were supposed to start at 1:00 PM, there was already a wait before we’d even started. The woman was unbelievably rude (and elderly) and actually threatened to punch a guy in the face. So, while we waited, we milled around the «museum» and gift shop.
The gift shop was literally the most random amalgamation of useless cheap crap I can’t believe anyone would buy imaginable. 90% of it had nothing to do with Rutherford B. Hayes, history, or the presidency. The store clerk was similarly angry and rude.
The «museum» was also random and full of «artifacts» labeled with things like «A comb thought to have been found on a street by a neighbor, who gave it to Hayes’ second cousin’s niece, who gave it to someone Hayes might have known at some point during his Presidency.» Most of it was random, irrelevant, and given strange importance. It was so random that it was actually funny. We did get some interesting historical factoids, but overall it’s was a bizarre waste of time.
After we realized it had been like 30 minutes, we went back to the sleigh ride table to find out what was going on with that. This is the point at which the elderly lady running the show started screaming out names from a list, threatening people, and generally being publicly abusive. Luckily for us, we were in the front of the line, which was like 80-​people deep, so we got our ride first.
The sleigh was beautiful with Clydesdales, but the ride literally lasted 10 minutes and was one jaunt around the property. It lasted just long enough for us to take pictures and lament how short it was.
After, we wandered over to the presidential mansion, where we were met with even more rude, elderly women. Since the entire operation was a rinkydink clusterfuck, no one had explained that you needed separate tickets for the mansion tour. So, when we were standing on the porch looking around, a guide popped her head out the door, screamed at us to come inside because the tour was starting, and then literally slammed the door in our faces when she discovered that we didn’t have the correct tickets. Awesome.
So we got tickets and went on the tour anyway. The mansion was beautiful but had been added onto and renovated many times throughout the years, including current restoration. It had not yet been fully restored, so as you walked through the rooms, you literally had to LOOK AT AN OLD PHOTO of the room to see what you SHOULD be looking at. In the actual room there, was generally antique furniture with ripped upholstery, horrific carpeting, mostly bare walls, and maybe a piece of art. 80% of the tour was the guide explaining how things should/​would look once restoration had been completed, which included skipping a majority of the property (since we certainly didn’t see 31 rooms). Also, there’s no photography inside, which is precious.
All in all, completely not worth the time, trip, or money. In lieu of coming here, to approximate the visit we would suggest that you read Rutherford B. Hayes’ Wiki, stand outside in the snow for 40 minutes, stare at a picture of a Clydesdale for 1 minute, visit a flea market for 10 minutes, ask your grandma to yell at you for awhile, and set fire to $ 30.

This review is for the sleigh ride. Being that I’m a native Southern Californian, naturally I wanted to do a winter sleigh ride when I went to Ohio to visit my fiancé’s family this past holiday season. Little did we know that it would be such a popular activity and we would have to stand in line for 1.5 hours outside in the freezing, falling snow. Fortunately, there were 2 carriages. The carriage ride itself was about 10 minutes long through the grounds of the presidential library. For $ 3 per person, it a great deal, but that’s if you can handle standing outside in the freezing cold.

My biggest impression of the Hayes center was how disorganized everything was. There was no order to the artifacts, and even the house has been restored in different times (the family occupied the house until the 60’s so the styles vary).
As a librarian I was upset at how poorly labeled the public museum exhibits were, but impressed with the actual research library.
The house can only be viewed by tour, which is unfortunate. The tour guide was nice but focused too much attention on the youngest member of the tour, and only child. At one point I got bored, stopped listening to the tour and would look at the rooms after the others moved through the room.
I visited the Hayes Center when I was younger on a school field trip. It seemed the kids were enjoying it more than I was so this is probably a good spot to take children who are interested in history.
The grounds are also nice, there were horse drawn carriage rides going around the day I was there. There are some good points to the museum, but overall I was more disappointed than pleased with it.

I have an unnatural fascination with presidential history. I can admit it and I admit that it is a bit odd. That being said — its (one of) my thing (s).
When I found out that I’d be in Cleveland for a conference I immediately started doing research about any potential presidential hot-​spots. I was thrilled to find the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library. So thrilled in-​fact that I was willing to drive 90 minutes each way after flying all day. So thrilled that I was going to spend triple the amount of time driving to the center as I spent AT the center. Some might consider this poor planning. I consider it dedication.
So — the library itself was cool. It is loaded with information and artifacts from Hayes and his family’s life. There are dresses from Lucy and her doll houses. Lots of stuff from people that the US destroyed during his presidency (Native Americans, the Philippines, and China).
Unfortunately — I suspect that the Hayes Home; a 31 room mansion would have been a better use of my limited time. I’ll just have to find another time to make it to Fremont, Ohio!