HOPE, Ark. — The Bill Clinton First Home Museum will soon be a part of the National Park system, a designation that will give the modest structure on a busy street more visibility as a tourist destination.

The two-story, wood frame house on Hervey Street in Hope, Ark., was where Clinton lived from his birth in 1946 at Julia Chester Hospital until age 4. The home was occupied until it was acquired by the Clinton Birthplace Foundation during Clinton's presidency.

The dwelling, which opened as a museum in 1997, conveys a lived-in feeling and is furnished with items that date to the late 1940s when Clinton lived there. A separate visitors center with a gift shop was added later.

The South Hervey Street home served as the center of Clinton's family life for his first 10 years. After moving, Clinton spent summers there, visited on weekends and attended other family gatherings there until his grandfather, Eldridge Cassidy, died in 1956.

The one original piece of furniture from Clinton's time in the house is the living room couch. While visitors are not permitted to touch or sit on the furniture, the home has no glass partitions or roped-off areas, thus preserving the ambiance of a private home.

Museum director Martha Berryman says the people around Clinton provided him with his first notions of "social justice," a theme he carried through his political life and into his post-presidential work.

Displays include pictures of grandfather Eldridge Cassidy's store, where he served white and black customers, which was an uncommon practice in Hope in those days. Cassidy was known to extend credit during hard times, sometimes forgive debts or slip extra food into a family's order.

"This is not lost on a little child with wide eyes and big ears," Berryman said.

Berryman produced a recent find, a snapshot of Clinton as a boy standing in front of the house. The white paint on the house is peeling badly.

"He (Eldridge Cassidy) couldn't afford to paint his house, but he could afford to let families have free food," Berryman said.

Berryman says she regularly straightens out myths — including misperceptions that the family lived in poverty, that Clinton was born in the house, and that his father abandoned him. The future president's father, William Jefferson Blythe II, died in a traffic crash a few months before his son was born.

Berryman said visitors who come from around the world are moved by what they see, and have a sense they are someplace special.

"People want to stand on sacred ground," Berryman said.