Statement by the President Upon Signing Bill Establishing the John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site.

SOME BUILDINGS become landmarks because their architecture is imposing; others, because they are meant by a nation or a people to be monuments and symbols.

Still others are set apart through no quality of their own. They become famous because they evoke the name and the memory of great men--or one great man.

So it is with the two-story frame house at 83 Beals Street, Brookline, Massachusetts.

On May 29, 1917, John F. Kennedy was born in that house.

Today we establish it as a national historic site.

President Kennedy's family bought that house not long ago and presented it to the people of the United States. Through the generosity of his family, it will be restored in a style reflecting his boyhood years there, 1917-1920.

I am happy to sign this bill today. For years to come, for great numbers of visitors it will make more rich, more vivid, and more meaningful the memory of a great American.