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(Photograph by Dell Upton)
Built for physician H. J. S. Garret, this two-story wooden house was owned by James and Edith Cassidy in 1946, the year that their grandson William Jefferson Blythe III (named for his father, who died shortly before his birth) was born in the local hospital, and the boy spent the first four years of his life here. (Later, when his mother remarried, the boy took his stepfather’s surname and became known as Bill Clinton.) The house is a simple two-story foursquare design with a central hall plan, a single-story front porch, and a small dormer in the hipped roof. This was a popular residential form in the early twentieth century. The interior retains most of its original architectural elements and has been restored with furniture to illustrate the 1940s–1950s era of Clinton’s youth. To the house’s rear is a large garden and adjacent to it is a one-story brick house that has been converted to serve as a visitor center and museum. In 2010 Clinton’s childhood home was designated a National Historic Site.