George W. Bush

George W. Bush was born in 1946 in a hospital in New Haven, Connecticut, and he lived in the city for his first two years of life (in a house now occupied by the Yale School of Economics), while his father finished school at Yale. After that, the new family moved to West Texas, ending up at this house in Midland.

George Sr. paid $9,000 for the 12 year old 1,400 square foot home, at 1412 West Ohio Avenue. Over their time there, the family grew with three more children. Four years later, when George W. was eight, the family moved into a bigger house in town.

The house changed hands many times after they sold it. It was purchased by the Permian Basin Board of Realtors in 2001 for $100,000, and turned over to the George W. Bush Childhood Home, Inc. a nonprofit supported in part by the Bush family, in order to become a museum.

It was restored to the time that the Bushes were living there, and opened to the public in 2006.

The family moved to Houston in 1959, and the following year George W. went away to boarding school in Massachusetts (Phillips Andover, where his father went too), then to college at Yale (like his father), then, also like his father, moved to Midland, to work in the oil business, in 1975.

George W. and his wife bought this house, at 1405 Golf Course Road, in 1977, raising their two children there, until 1985, when they moved away. The house was sold and is still privately occupied. It was listed for sale in 2008 for $239,000.

George W. founded and managed a few small oil and gas exploration companies, including Arbusto Energy, in 1979, which evolved into Harken Energy in 1986. He moved his family to Washington in 1988 to help manage his father’s presidential campaign, then got involved in Dallas’ Texas Rangers baseball franchise in 1989, and local politics.

George W. became governor of Texas in 1994, and lived in the state-provided Governor’s Mansion in Austin. Towards the end of his term, he started looking for a more elaborate Texas spread to call his own, and in 1999 purchased a 1,500 acre hog farm in Crawford, down the road from Waco, known as the Prairie Chapel Ranch.

He won the Presidency in 2000, and served for two terms, during which his ranch in Crawford became another Western White House, like Ronald Reagan’s and Lyndon Johnson’s.

He built several structures there while president, including the four-bedroom main house, designed by University of Texas professor and architect David Heymann, and a guest house. Other buildings on the property include a helicopter hangar, and an old farm house.

The Secret Service barricade on Rainey Road is the main entrance to Bush’s ranch in Crawford.

After the presidency, George W. Bush bought a 8,500 square foot house in the Preston Hollow neighborhood in northern Dallas, an affluent neighborhood, where people like Ross Perot also have homes. The street through his block now has a gate on it. He continues to go to Crawford on weekends and holidays.

His presidential library and museum opened in 2013 at his wife’s alma mater, Southern Methodist University, near Dallas. It’s the third presidential library in Texas.

The library lobby has an elaborate dynamic display along its entablature.

One of the many high-tech display features of the facility.

The museum has a dozen galleries, addressing different themes, and historical moments during his presidency.

As in other recent presidential museums, the president had a major role in its design.

And it includes a replica of the Oval Office as it appeared over his tenure.