John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum

Stand still for a moment and listen. Wind comes in off the water and pulls at your jacket. Gulls call over Dorchester Bay. Across the waves, the towers of downtown Boston rise in a low, grey line. You are at Columbia Point, a narrow spit of land on the southern edge of the city. In front of you is a sharp white building of concrete and dark glass. It looks less like a monument than like a ship that has come in to rest at the edge of the harbour.

This is the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. It holds the papers, photographs, recordings and personal objects of the thirty-fifth President of the United States. It is part of the national system of presidential libraries, run by the National Archives. That means it is two things at once. It is a public museum, and it is also a working archive. Researchers come here to read original documents from the Kennedy years.

Here is the first thing most visitors never learn. This was not the original plan for the site. After the President's death in November 1963, the library was meant to stand in Cambridge, close to Harvard, where Kennedy had studied. But some local residents worried about crowds and traffic in their neighbourhood. The debate went on for years. In the end, the project moved here, to this open and windy point by the sea. It was dedicated in October 1979.

The architect was I. M. Pei. Jacqueline Kennedy chose him herself, at a time when he was not yet widely known. Pei later became one of the most famous architects in the world. He designed the glass pyramid at the Louvre in Paris. Here you can see his early style clearly. He used clean geometry, bright white concrete and large planes of glass. The shapes are simple, but they meet at sharp and surprising angles.

Look at how the building is put together. A tall triangular tower of white concrete stands on one side. Beside it is a great box of dark glass. The tower holds the offices and archives. The glass box is the pavilion, the emotional centre of the whole building. From the outside it looks almost black on a cloudy day. On a sunny day it catches the sky and the water, and the glass turns silver and blue.

Kennedy loved the sea, and that is a key to this place. He grew up sailing off Cape Cod, at the family home in Hyannis Port. In the warmer months, his own wooden sailboat, the Victura, often sits on the lawn outside. It is small and plain. He received it as a teenager and sailed it for most of his life. Seeing it here, next to the water, tells you more about the man than many speeches.

Inside, the visit usually begins with a short film about Kennedy's early life and the road to the presidency. Then the museum follows the 1960 campaign. This was a close and hard-fought race against Richard Nixon. It was also the first campaign shaped by television. The museum shows a recreation of the studio where the two men held their famous televised debate. Many viewers felt that Kennedy looked calm and confident on screen, and that this helped him win.

From there, the galleries move into the White House years, from his inauguration in January 1961. You will hear the famous line from his inaugural address — ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country. The exhibits cover the Peace Corps, the space race and the struggle for civil rights. There is also a recreation of the Oval Office as it looked during his time. Look at the desk and the rocking chair. Kennedy used a rocking chair to ease his chronic back pain.

One of the most powerful rooms covers the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. For about two weeks, the United States and the Soviet Union came close to nuclear war. The Soviets had placed missiles in Cuba, and Kennedy and his advisers had to decide how to respond. The exhibit uses recordings, documents and television footage from those days. It is quiet in there. People tend to stop talking. Even now, the tension of those thirteen days is easy to feel.

The space race has its own place in the story. Kennedy set the goal of landing a person on the Moon before the end of the decade. In a speech in Houston in 1962, he said that America chose to go to the Moon not because it was easy, but because it was hard. He did not live to see it. The landing came in 1969, almost six years after his death.

Here is a second surprise. This library also holds the largest collection of papers belonging to the writer Ernest Hemingway. His widow chose to place them here, with help from the Kennedy family. So alongside a president's archive, you will find manuscripts, letters and photographs from one of the great American novelists. Scholars from around the world come to study them. It is a strange and wonderful pairing under one roof.

The museum ends with the President's death in Dallas on November 22, 1963. The galleries here are dim and simple. Then you walk out into the glass pavilion, and the light changes completely. The space rises several stories above you. A huge American flag hangs from the frame. Through the glass wall you can see the sea and the sky. Pei designed this moment on purpose. You move from darkness into open light, from grief toward something larger.

Take your time in the pavilion before you leave. Notice how quiet it is, even with other people around you. Look out across the bay toward the city where Kennedy began his political life. Then step outside again. Feel the wind and hear the gulls. As you walk back along the water, turn once and look at the white tower against the sky. It was built to look out to sea — the way he so often did.