During a weekend visit to Boston on October 19, 1963, President Kennedy and John Carl Warnecke, the architect who designed Kennedy's Tomb of the Eternal Flame at Arlington National Cemetery[4][5] viewed several possible locations offered by Harvard University as a site for the library and museum.

Kennedy had not decided on any design concept yet, but he felt that the existing presidential libraries were placed too "far away from scholarly resources.

[4] The building would face the Charles River which was a few feet away, and on the other side of which, the dormitories that included Winthrop House where Kennedy spent his upperclassman days.

[4] Since Kennedy encouraged his administration to save effects of both personal and official nature, the complex would not just be a collection of the President's papers, but "a complete record of a Presidential era."

[4] After President Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, his family and friends discussed how to construct a library that would serve as a fitting memorial.

The group deliberated for months, and visited with architects from around the world including Pietro Belluschi and others from the United States, Brazil's Lucio Costa, and Italy's Franco Albini.

After the assassination, Cambridge residents actively opposed the Kennedy family's efforts to build a presidential library at Harvard Square due to traffic concerns.

[7] On January 13, 1964, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy announced that a taped oral-history project was to be undertaken for inclusion in the library.

[9] Large donations came from the Hispanic world with Venezuela pledging $100,000 and Governor of Puerto Rico Luis Muñoz Marín offering the same.

Nehru said that the Indian people were hit by a "sad blow" when the President died, and that they held him "in the highest regard, esteem and affection."

He desired for Indian students abroad in the United States to use the library, then still planned for construction at Harvard along the banks of the Charles River.

[11] On December 13, 1964, the Kennedy family announced that I. M. Pei was unanimously chosen by a subcommittee as the architect of the library.

[12][13] Even though Pei was relatively unknown amongst the list of candidates, Mrs. Kennedy, who viewed him as filled with promise and imagination and after spending several months inspecting the many architects' offices and creations, selected him to create the vision she held for the project.

[19] Only now could Pei prepare a six-month study of the site's soil, and he said the "money we had six years ago, today will barely pay for 60 percent of the original plans.

[20] The first in a series of installments expected to total $5 million, came from the profits of the 1967 book The Death of a President which caused a bitter feud between the Kennedys and Manchester.

By 1971, construction had still not begun; researchers and scholars were forced to work out of the Federal Records Center which was temporarily housing some of the 15 million documents and manuscripts.

On the campus of the University of Texas at Austin, and next to the LBJ School of Public Affairs, he would beat the Kennedy team to building the first Presidential Library that also served as a place of scholarly research.

One neighborhood group filed a lawsuit in federal court demanding that the General Services Administration study, which found that the great number of visitors would have "no adverse effect on the area," be reexamined.

In all seriousness, he asserted that one could toss a lit match on the earth and watch the ground ignite as the soil emitted methane gas.

[13] Outside the building on the green, on a blue-carpeted stage with a bank of yellow chrysanthemums sat the Kennedy family and those close to them.

President Carter said of John F. Kennedy that he embodied "the ideals of a generation as few public figures have ever done in the history of the earth.

[26] Senator Edward M. Kennedy, said of his brother's life, that it "was a voyage of discovery, a quest for excellence that inspired universal trust and faith.

The years of conflict and compromise had changed the nature of the design, and Pei felt that the final result lacked its original passion.

[51] It is modelled after a program by the Columbia University Oral History Research Office, the world's oldest, which began in 1948.

[8] At its conception, while serving as Attorney General, Robert Kennedy speculated that some of the interviews, such as ones relating to the Cuban Missile Crisis, might have to be sealed for a while due to containing "highly classified material."

[53] In 1961, despite a U.S. travel ban to Cuba, President Kennedy had arranged to allow Mary Hemingway to go there to claim her recently deceased husband's documents and belongings.