Hyde Park

Thursday, May 30, Day 38

We left Uncle Bill's and Pennsylvania this morning, headed to Hyde Park, New York.  

The reason we are going to Hyde Park is that it is sort of on the way to  Connecticut, where we will visit a friend, and then on to Massachusetts where we are visiting John's cousin Liz and her family.  There has been a lot of rain lately and the scenery is so beautiful all along the way, green and lush. 

We are beginning to see that part of the country painted so beautifully by the Hudson River artists.

We cross over into New York again.

I am just amazed by the terrain in these New England states.  It is so marshy and boggy.

We  cross over the Hudson  River near Hyde Park.

Kind of an old fashioned bridge way above the river.

And below is the beautiful Hudson.

Hyde Park isn't too far up the road.

We have a choice.  We can go to the Culinary Institute of America, visit the Vanderbilt mansion, or go see FDR's home.  We opt for the latter.  It is called Springwood.  It was originally just the middle section, but FDR had two wings built on.

In the garden on the grounds are these statues of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt.  As distant cousins, they united two Roosevelt families.  Eleanor came from the Teddy Roosevelt side.  Her maiden name was also Roosevelt before she married Franklin. 

Inside the house is this statue of FDR, a portrayal of him at about age 30.

It was Franklin's mother who had the money in the family.  The Roosevelt and Delano families made their fame and fortune on the rum, sugar and opium trades.  Sara Delano was 27 years younger than her husband, and Franklin was their only child.  Sara managed this 1500 acre property overlooking the Hudson River until her death in 1941, just three short years before  Franklin himself died.  Stories abound about the relationship between Sara, FDR and Eleanor.

Curtis Roosevelt, FDR's grandson and the only remaining relative of that generation,  has written an excellent book about what it was like to grow up in the Roosevelt household. He found the furnishings to be practical, but nothing extraordinary.  FDR was born in this house, lived there most of his life, and was buried there.

Here's the living room.

Franklin had a collection of political cartoons on the wall.  Most of them dealt in a negative way with the relationship between England and the US.  When King George VI and Queen Elizabeth (the current Queen's parents)  were coming to visit, Eleanor suggested he take them down.  He didn't, and this collection was the first thing the King gravitated to when he entered the house.  After looking them over, he said, "Hmm, you have some that I don't have."

The thing that Sarah insisted on for the visit was that they sit down for afternoon tea.  So Franklin said to the King, "My mother says we should have tea."  To which the King relied, "My mother would say the same thing."  And they promptly went off to the living room for a cocktail.

This is Sarah's room.  It was pretty spacious, relative to the other rooms.

Eleanor's room was small, but she spent most of the time at her own residence, Val-Kill, which is just down the road.

Franklin's room was well equipped to handle the paralysis he had from polio, which had rendered him
motionless from the waist down.  Now there is speculation that his paralysis was the result of Guillaume Barre disease instead.  Whatever the cause, he invented a great many devices which would ultimately benefit many thousands of others stricken with polio.  His wheel chair, for example, which sits in the elevator, was the prototype for many others. I think the majority of scientists still think he had polio.

A portrait of FDA as a child.

The view from outside the house should be a magnificent panorama of the Hudson River.  However, the foliage has grown to the point of obscuring the river.  Not a bad view either way!

When he was buried here, FDR requested a very simple gravestone.   Eleanor is buried here too, as is the little dog he adored called Fala.

It is interesting that the grounds are maintained with a different type of grass to designate the two burial plots.

We did not arrive in time to go through the Presidential Library, the first one created by any President.  But we really enjoyed our tour of the house.  The Presidential Library is undergoing a renovation, and won't be ready for a few more months.