Marking 40 Years Since the Only Presidential Resignation

Visitors to Central Library can look back with a new temporary display of historic newspapers, magazines, political campaign items and pop culture collectibles related to President Richard M. Nixon and the scandal that brought him down 40 summers ago. 

The items, from a private collection, range in eras from Nixon’s 1950s campaigns for vice president to a bound volume of official congressional tributes following his death in 1994.

A t-shirt from the late 1970s warns readers “Don’t Buy Books By Crooks,” a national campaign against Nixon’s memoirs that was based in Arlington. The memoirs are part of the Library collection.

The display also includes a swatch of carpeting from the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate, the target of the 1972 break-in that led to a much wider investigation.

Arlington Public Library is also marking the resignation anniversary with a rare public appearance by acclaimed journalist Elizabeth Drew on Tuesday night, Aug. 12, at Central Library. Drew has republished, with a new afterward, her landmark book “Washington Journal,” which collects her coverage of Watergate as written for the New Yorker.

The anniversary comes as Arlington’s own Watergate-related landmark is destined to become history. The Rosslyn parking garage used by Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward to meet with his “Deep Throat” source, FBI official Mark Felt, was recently slated for demolition but no sooner than January 2017.