The George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum is home to the presidential archives of the 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush, who served as President from 2001 to 2009. Located on the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, the museum is housed inside the George W. Bush Presidential Center on a 23-acre site on the east side of the campus and honors the Bush presidency.
The 14,000-square-foot museum features a 20-foot tall, 360-degree LED screen showing high-definition multimedia clips, a full-size replica of the White House Oval Office and the original White House Situation Room. In 2006, President George W. Bush directed the White House Situation Room be renovated and updated with modern technology. The Conference Room and Command Room were preserved while renovations were underway, and reconstructed at the George W. Bush Presidential Library in Dallas and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California. These Presidential Libraries have partnered to create the Situation Room Experience, an immersive, role-playing simulation that transports visitors into a high-stakes, fast-paced, decision-making arena where they face a national crisis based upon historical fact, adding authenticity and excitement to the Library experience.
More than 43,000 artifacts are held at the library, primarily gifts given to the President and Mrs. Bush, along with items obtained during their travels and events. The most notable is the “Nation Under Attack” exhibit, which displays twisted steel beams from the World Trade Center that visitors may touch, the bullhorn President Bush used at Ground Zero, as well as letters received in the days following the 9/11 attacks.
The 13th U.S. Presidential Library, the George W. Bush Presidential Library features a unique time when technology was rapidly changing communication methods, with paper being replaced by email. The library houses almost 70 million pages of textual materials, over 80 terabytes of electronic records and about 200 million emails, as well as 3.8 million photographs, 227 cubic feet of photo negatives and 1200 cubic feet of audiovisual materials.
The George W. Bush Presidential Center is the first Presidential Library to earn a Platinum certification for New Construction by the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program. The program stresses the use of sustainable, energy efficient materials and systems that reduce a facility’s impact on the environment and promotes human health.