Born of the Badlands, the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library is ‘a call to adventure’
The Snøhetta-designed library and museum, its architecture inspired by its North Dakota Badlands surroundings, builds on the legacy of a larger-than-life leader – and opens 4 July 2026
Theodore Roosevelt is largely remembered for his heroic command at the Battle of San Juan Hill, for doubling the national park system and for surviving an attempt on his life thanks to a serendipitously positioned eyeglasses case. But when Roosevelt arrived in the North Dakota Badlands in June 1884, he was a broken man; both his mother and his wife had died within hours of each other just months before. The wild frontier offered a place where the 25-year-old could grieve. ‘Nothing could be more lonely and nothing more beautiful,' he recounted of moonlight striking the sawtoothed expanse. Roosevelt eventually remarried and, in 1901, became America’s 26th president, an achievement he credited to his time in North Dakota.
Explore the new Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library
More than a century later, Roosevelt is back in the Badlands in the form of a $400m Snøhetta-designed library and museum, which will be inaugurated on Independence Day for America's 250th birthday. With its low-slung profile and grassy roof, the building appears as but a murmur on the prairie. ‘You could easily have argued that the library should have been some grand, bold representational architecture that stood in violent contrast with the landscape – but that's not what we wanted,' says the new library's CEO Edward O'Keefe, a North Dakota native.
Snøhetta won the design job in 2020, following an extensive selection process. ‘Our starting point was how to make this landscape something real. We didn't talk about a building,' says firm co-founder, and Wallpaper* US400 honoree, Craig Dykers, who spent ten days hiking through the area (‘It's called the Badlands for a reason,' deadpans Dykers). A pair of pebbles picked up on the trek made their way to a design meeting, their smooth surfaces and complementary scales suggesting a two-part building. When a leaf drifted onto the table, the architects realised they had a roof – and their concept.
The resulting, 96,000 sq ft structure differs little from the rock-and-leaf exercise. The library consists of two volumes – one for exhibition space, the other for public programmes – united by a landscaped canopy. The unique structural system is a mass-timber-and-steel hybrid, with striated rammed earth walls, attributes that will help it achieve Living Building Challenge certification, one of the world's most rigorous sustainability standards. The roof, planted with prairie grasses and lined with trails, offers panoramic views of the Badlands, vistas that would have captivated Roosevelt more than a century ago.
Inside, immersive exhibits put guests into vignettes from Roosevelt's life, from his childhood home to the Bull Moose campaign trail. There are also treasured artefacts on view, including Roosevelt's cavalry uniform and the eyeglasses case that thwarted an assassin's bullet. ‘In most museums, you're learning facts and figures about a person's life or time. Here, you're the main character in the story,' says O'Keefe.
One of the library's most important aspects is a one-mile trail that circumscribes the site and connects to a broader trail network, a nod to Roosevelt's legacy as a pioneering conservationist. At one moment, visitors may encounter an elevated boardwalk; at another, they may descend into a sunken channel and be eye-level with the prairie. ‘The idea is that we're helping people read and see this place, and learn from it in the ways that Roosevelt did,' says Michelle Delk, a landscape architect and partner at Snøhetta.
Working with North Dakota State University and restoration group Resource Environmental Solutions, the library has launched an initiative that sees students, volunteers and ecologists collect seeds from around 200 local species with the goal of cultivating and replanting them on the library site and across the Badlands region.
And there are attempts to heal the land in other ways. While Roosevelt remains one of America's most popular presidents, there are problematic facets of his legacy, including white supremacist views. Shortly after acquiring the land from the US Forest Service, the library's leadership invited members of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara (MHA) Nation, along with Roosevelt's descendants, to the site for a land blessing ceremony. Representatives of the Standing Rock Sioux, Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa and other tribes were also present.
The building's location at the edge of a steep escarpment preserves the landscape for conservation research, as well as connecting visitors to a host of boardwalks and cross-country trails
There has been a lot of talk of presidential legacies in the US lately, but this building has a different aim, says O'Keefe: to use the past to inspire and interrogate what it means to be a global citizen. ‘“Library” and “museum” are probably the two least accurate words to describe what we have built,' he says. ‘It's a call to adventure.'
This article appears in Wallpaper’s August 2026 Creative America issue, available from 4 July, in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today
