This is a quirky little site. Even Teddy didn’t spend much time here. He arrived in response to McKinley’s assassination, left when told he would recover, returned upon hearing he would die, and was inaugurated in 30 minutes by a local judge.

One of Teddy’s first official acts here was to invite Booker T. Washington to the White House. Teddy was also famously friends with John Muir, and he also befriended activist Jane Addams—who eventually won a Nobel Peace Prize and deserves a park site of her own. You can tell a lot about a person by his friends.

There are only a handful of rooms to see, but there are interactive exhibits about the Pan American Expo—where McKinley was shot by an anarchist—issues of Teddy’s Presidency, his friends & advisors, his draft first speech, and the room above where he was sworn into office. The tour evokes the hasty events here well. And if you get hungry, there’s a bar down the street that claims to have invented Buffalo Wings.