At this site on the Lincoln Highway, Batavia residents witnessed visits from two future U.S. presidents.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, then a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, was part of the 1919 long-distance convoy carried out by the U.S. Army Motor Transport Corps. It traveled 3,250 miles in 56 days, mainly along the Lincoln Highway route, from the Ellipse, south of the White House in Washington, D.C., to the Presidio in San Francisco.

The convoy stopped in Batavia on July 21, 1919, and used a trough by the high school (now the Batavia Public Library) to fill its vehicles with water. Eisenhower reportedly stood at the intersection of Batavia Avenue and Wilson Street, directing traffic around the line of military vehicles.

The expedition, promoted by the Lincoln Highway Association, aroused great interest in the Good Roads Movement and later influenced President Eisenhower to become a champion of the Interstate Highway System.

John F. Kennedy, then a U.S. senator representing the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, stopped at this site on October 25, 1960, during his presidential campaign, and briefly addressed the assemblage.

Following his remarks, Kennedy encountered Bert Lewis Johnson, owner of Johnson’s Drug Store, who first met the senator, then a lieutenant junior grade, at Rendova, in the Solomon Islands, following the sinking of PT-109. Lt. Johnson served as the communications officer aboard the ship that transported Kennedy and the other PT-109 survivors from Rendova to the base at Tulagi in August 1943.