LADUE, Mo. _ It's a recreation room with a presidential touch.
In fact, 44 presidents have touched and signed documents, letters and photos that are framed and decorate one long, basement wall in the Ladue home of Mark and Patricia Mantovani.
It took Mark Mantovani 15 years to come up with his collection of presidential signatures, from Washington to Obama. He has yet to acquire a Donald Trump signature _ noted in recent news stories for its vertical, pointy lines.
"One of the things that drives availability is how prominent the guy was. If they were, people retain the signatures," he said. "I suspect people threw Trump stuff away because people didn't know he would be president."
Mantovani, 62, began his collection in the mid-'90s, when he went to a sports memorabilia show with a friend, Dave Clark. Mantovani liked sports but wasn't so much interested in the things that went with it. He decided to go anyway. A rookie Wayne Gretzky hockey card for $1,000 caught Clark's eye. But on the next table, another vendor displayed two signed letters from Herbert Hoover for $150 each. He and Clark each bought a letter. He doesn't remember if anyone bought the rookie card.
"I was amazed documents like that were readily available," he said. "It would seem to me they would be in libraries or archives."
But as he researched, he learned he could find them for a few hundred to a few thousand dollars each. He has stuck to reputable auction houses that can verify the authenticity of the signatures. He learned that it's pretty difficult to acquire a full collection of things signed by presidents while they were in office: William Henry Harrison served 31 days in office before dying of pneumonia. James Garfield was shot after three months in office and died about three months after that.
Mantovani has the document or letter framed with a portrait or photo of the president, and sometimes the photo itself is signed.
He gets many of his signatures from RR Auction house based in Boston. Robert Livingston, the vice president of the auction house, says the tradition of presidential autograph collecting started around the 1820s, when the original Founding Fathers started to pass away. "If you can imagine, people who collect presidential autographs want one of every president. Every one." And then there are collectors who want them on only letters or official documents, he said.
He said the value of a signature depends on the document, popularity of the president, and the availability _ and while he hasn't seen a handwritten letter by Trump, he did see an autograph go from $200 to $1,200 over election night.
The presidents with the messier signatures? "I think George W. has some pretty messy handwriting," he said. "But Kennedy's handwriting is a mess. Scribble. If you look at some of these old letters, it's incredible. Some of the penmanship is just so beautiful. I really like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Very, very, very neat."
Mantovani likes to collect documents that have a tie to St. Louis. His Harry Truman signature is on a letter Truman wrote to St. Louis Mayor Joseph Darst in May 1952. Truman's thanking Darst for an invitation to a dedication of a housing project but explains he already has an out-of-town engagement. "I hope you will express my regret and inform the people of Saint Louis that they are making progress in low cost housing," Truman writes. He was probably referring to the Cochran Gardens project, which opened that month and was eventually demolished in 2008.
He has a letter from Ulysses S. Grant written in 1871 to William Elrod, the manager of Grant's Farm. The letter gives instructions for where to place a fence on the property. "I would run the road from where it now leaves the Gravois pike straight to a point in the creek about half way between the old barn and the Gravois road..." Grant wrote.
Mantovani can picture the area this president was picturing himself nearly 150 years ago. "I grew up in Affton," Mantovani says. "I was amazed."
Mantovani has always been interested in history and politics and worked as a lawyer for about 17 years before he took over a marketing agency, Ansira, before he recently sold it. He and Patricia spent the past year at Harvard University while he took part in an advanced leadership program, and now he's figuring out the next step.
He considers himself of "moderate, centrist orientation" and has historically supported both parties. He declines to say who he supported in the last election. He likes reading the biographies of the presidents to learn about their leadership styles and commitment to public service. "They're flawed, just like all of us," he said. "We expect to hold them to a certain standard and forget that people are just people. We have a lot to learn from them."
He likes to collect signatures that show something about the person behind the office. Bill Clinton's signature is on an otherwise-formal, typewritten birthday greeting to a friend from Arkansas. But in script, he writes, "What a wonderful friend _ for a lifetime _ you've been _"
Mantovani laughs. "Doesn't that sound like Clinton?"
Mantovani waited years until he found just the right Abraham Lincoln signature for his collection. It's on a little note that he wrote, an executive order that allowed a Southern prisoner of war to take an oath of allegiance to the North and be discharged. "Think about that," Mantovani said. "He pardoned more POWs that could have been executed. It reflects his compassion. It's that whole malice toward none, charity toward all orientation."
His Barack Obama signature is on a campaign photo. "To Laura _ Thank you for your support!" it says.
Obama's signature is not as available as you might think, said Mantovani, because of the age of electronic correspondence. "Which is why I have that silly campaign photograph," said Mantovani. "I haven't seen a good letter."
The signatures are popular with visitors to his home, and he loves to tell the history behind each one. "I find it fascinating," he said. "When I hold a letter or document that a president has signed or touched, I just feel kind of in touch with our history. It brings history to life."
