Making A Day of Hyde Park
Posted by: Marilyn Bethany
Posted on: Thursday, March 06, 2008
Comments
A great story about a wonderful place and a great man!
Only one minor issue: with regard to his paralysis, the fact that FDR could not walk—or even stand up unassisted—was far from common knowledge when he was elected (or re-elected). It was felt by the family and those savvy in politics at the time that he could not be elected to anything if he were known to be “a cripple”.
I have this on fairly good authority. My great uncle, Horace Cross, was FDR’s “secretary” when he was Governor of NYS. Although he was a Cornell grad, and thus presumably literate, his principal secretarial duties consisted of basically holding FDR upright when he needed to be assisted to a podium (that he could hold onto) or for a publicity photo when he could not hold onto something.
You’ll not see any photos of Horace with FDR at Hyde Park, however. Seems Horace got tangled up with unsavory types, and the family parked him in a job in one of thes state administration where his unseemly associates could not sully the reputation of FDR. Interestingly, I think my family appreciated the loyalty of the Roosevelts, even though Horace essentially became a non-person.
One wonders what would have happened today, both with regard to a presidential candidate with a visible handicap, and with an associate who had unsavory associates. Can it be that the 1930s were kinder and gentler times?
Wonderful piece! Thank you. But did I miss a reference to Val Kill in the story? A visitor to Hyde Park should also visit Val Kill, the compound built by first lady Eleanor Roosevelt that she shared with her friends, the lovers Marion Dickerman and Nancy Cook. Another resident was Eleanor’s close friend Lorena Hickok. Talk about sex and the presidency! To get a sense of the place and its significance as a private retreat for a very wonderful and public woman, first read EMPTY WITHOUT YOU, the Intimate Letters Between Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok.
Here’s a link to Val Kill: http://www.nps.gov/elro/
If the press in the 30s were as obsessed with prurience as they are now, FDR’s New Deal would never have happened. Instead he would have been known for some version of parsing the definition of what “is” is.
Great piece, RURAL INTELLIGENCE! Welcome to the neighborhood!
Full Article
Springwood, the Dutchess County estate commonly (though erroneously) called Hyde Park, is to the pantheon of great American houses what Franklin Delano Roosevelt, its scion, is to the pantheon of great American men— perhaps not the most brilliant, but so preternaturally confident, relaxed, good-humored and patrician that any shortcomings are quickly overlooked. Like FDR, Springwood bears no trace of the arriviste striving and pomposity that casts a pall over the Vanderbilt Mansion next door. It is comfortable American well-to-do, rather than lugubrious European rich--better suited to a Democracy and certainly to a Democrat.
For those of us who live so near to it, it is easy to postpone a visit to Springwood on the grounds that it will always be there and will never change. Not so. Earlier this week, a new exhibit, “Action, and Action Now” FDR’s First One Hundred Days, premiered at the FDR library and museum there. With a presidential election looming, it is timely to reconsider how one new administration began in a time of crisis far greater than the one we face now. (And, when you finally go there, also give a couple of moments thought to presidential libraries, in general. FDR’s, a modest stone and slate-roofed affair, is as unlike the architectural monuments costing tens of millions that have become the recent norm as Springwood is to the Vanderbilt place. But I digress.)
Springwood: Well-to-do (okay, very well-to-do); Photograph by W.D. Urbin, NPS
The Roosevelt administration started with a bang. When he was elected, the Depression was entering its fifth year. Thousands of banks had failed, leaving their uninsured depositors penniless. Farmers in foreclosure and school teachers working without pay were demonstrating in the streets and being beaten and jailed by the police. Revolution appeared to be imminent and, to forestall that unthinkable end, the equally unthinkable means, a dictatorship, was being floated by, among others, Walter Lippmann, the pre-eminent liberal columnist of the day.
But Roosevelt did not use the state of emergency he inherited from Herbert Hoover as an excuse for making a power grab. He did not suspend the constitution or expand executive privilege to wartime levels, as many suggested he should. Instead, he instituted the first of his largely symbolic (in the beginning, at any rate) programs for putting the nation back to work and used the relatively new mass medium of radio to get his message across. That message was, of course, “We have nothing to fear...” but the subtext read, “Cheer up. Look at me, I can’t even walk, and I’m confident. Now that I’m running things, you can be confident, too.” Before his administration was 100 days old, there were long lines outside the banks, not of panicky people desperate to withdraw their life savings, but of upbeat depositors who saw it as their patriotic duty--if not as downright fashionable--to pull their cash from under their mattresses and put it back in the banks. The Age of Spin had dawned.
And then, on the 101st day, the president went sailing, and the press said, “well deserved.” Ah, those were the days. It’s all there, just down the road, inventively laid out for us at the The FDR Library. We sit in a replica of a Great Depression Era kitchen (built by McElroy Scenic Studios of Ashely Falls, MA, as was the rest of the exhibit) and listen to the radio as FDR’s voice assures us that, “We have nothing to fear, but…” well, you know. Viewed up close, yet from the safe distance of 75 years, it’s fascinating.
There’s More to Springwood Than Politics
Now let’s see, what else is interesting? Oh right, sex! Many people who visit Springwood combine it with a tour of the Vanderbilt Mansion, as it’s right there (there’s also an incentive built into the ticket-pricing structure--see below). But unless you’re really keen on ormolu, I’d advise you to skip that and visit Wilderstein instead. This 35-room Queen Anne pile overlooking the Hudson in Rhinebeck, a few miles north of Springwood, was the ancestral home of Margaret (Daisy) Suckley, who died there at the age of nearly 100 in 1991. Upon her death, a battered black suitcase was found beneath her bed and in it scores of love letters from her distant cousin FDR. Though she was one of the four women (Eleanor not among them) who were with Franklin when he died at Warm Springs, Georgia in 1945, it had not been suspected that they were lovers until after her death.
As Barbara Ireland, writing in The New York Times advises, see Top Cottage, FDR’s private hideaway in the hills three miles above Springwood before you leave Hyde Park. “Tour both places in the same day,” she writes. “But...do your homework first.” By which she means, read Geoffrey Ward’s Closest Companion: The Unknown Story of the Intimate Friendship Between Franklin Roosevelt and Margaret Suckley. Though Margaret Suckley’s own book about Roosevelt’s dog Fala (the Scotch Terrior that had been her gift to FDR) is available through the FDR bookstore, this one is not. Luckily, it can be purchased through the Wilderstein website, and there’s plenty of time to both order and read it: the properties--Wilderstein and Top Cottage--are closed for the season until May 1.
And now to lunch: There is only one sane option. The Culinary Institute of America, on the same road five minutes south of Springwood, is Disneyland for foodies. The campus has five restaurants, each specializing in a different style of cuisine and service. I don’t care for table-side service myself (think: silver domes whisked away in unison and frequent outbreaks of flambé) for the same reason I don’t care for ormolu, so I tend to avoid the admittedly fabulous Escoffier. The Ristorante Caterina de’Medici has wonderful Italian food, particularly the fish. But for lunch, my favorite is the St. Andrews Café. Don’t let that “Café” business fool you: this is a bright, attractive, carpeted, tablecloth joint, a perfect place to take a breather in the middle of a day of touring. While you are free to order a pizza or a sandwich at St. Andrews, to do so is to entirely miss the point. The food here is seriously tasty—modern, healthy, inventive, well-prepared and well-priced. Ask your waiter, a student, what to order. Trust him; he’s on his way to becoming the next Wolfgang Puck.
Springwood, the Roosevelt home, and The Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, 4079 Albany Post Road (Route 9), Hyde Park; 845.486.7745; combined admission $14.
Top Cottage (re-opens May 1); admission, $8.
Val-Kill Cottage, the Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site; admission $8.
The Vanderbilt Mansion; admission, $8.
(Buy any two of the above and get another one free.)
People under 15 admitted free; over 62, $10 with an Inter-agency Senior Pass (see the Springwood website for details).
Wilderstein (re-opens May 1), 330 Morton Road, Rhinebeck; 845.876.4816; admission $10; seniors $9; children under 12 free.
The Culinary Institute of America, Hyde Park; 845.471.6608 or reserve on-line
