The John F. Kennedy Hyannis Museum on Main Street

On Main Street in Hyannis, at number three hundred ninety-seven, stands the John F. Kennedy Hyannis Museum, housed in the town's former town hall, which served Barnstable's government until the nineteen eighties. This is not a museum about the presidency in Washington.

It is a museum about the Cape. Its galleries tell the story of the Kennedy family's long relationship with Hyannis Port through photographs, archival film, oral histories, and personal artifacts, tracing the summers, the sailing, the campaign, and the years John Kennedy spent along this shoreline from boyhood to the White House. Many of the most famous images of the family were taken within a few miles of where you stand, and the museum gathers them under one roof.

For a stretch of years the building also held the Cape Cod Baseball League Hall of Fame, celebrating the summer wooden-bat league that has sent hundreds of players to the major leagues. The museum sits at the center of Main Street's walkable district of shops and restaurants, making it an easy stop between the harbor and the memorial down by the water. If you want to understand why this quiet resort village became bound so tightly to a president's memory, this is where the local side of that story is kept.