On July 4, 2026, as the United States marks its 250th birthday, a library will open in the North Dakota Badlands that looks less like a civic institution than a manifesto built in stone and steel. Designed by the international architecture firm Snøhetta, the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in Medora will be the nation’s only carbon-neutral presidential library—a monument to conservation, leadership, and the rugged individualism of the 26th president, rising from the very landscape that made Roosevelt who he was.
Completing it required one final gift. On Thursday, that gift arrived: $26 million from Kenneth C. Griffin, founder and CEO of the $69 billion hedge fund Citadel. The library’s west wing will bear his name.
It was not the largest check Griffin has ever written. Not even close. But it is certainly revealing.
The collector of American founding myths
To understand what Griffin is doing in Medora, it helps to start in Philadelphia—or, more precisely, at a Sotheby’s auction in November 2021, where Griffin paid $43.2 million for a first printing of the United States Constitution, outbidding an internet collective of 17,000 cryptocurrency enthusiasts who had crowdfunded under the name ConstitutionDAO. The price set an all-time record for a book, manuscript, or historical document sold at auction.
