Theodore Roosevelt Association

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Legacy: Still a Presence at Sagamore Hill
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By Bill Bleyer
Staff Writer

It was almost as if Theodore Roosevelt were still alive.

Even after his death in 1919, his larger-than-life presence continued to attract visitors. They came -- the famous and the ordinary -- in a steady stream to T.R.'s grave and then to Sagamore Hill. The prince of Wales, Queen Marie of Romania and King Albert of Belgium. And once a year from 1920 into the 1940s, the president's closest friends would make a journey they called "the Roosevelt Pilgrimage." Fellow politicians and hunting friends and journalists, they would place wreaths at his grave and celebrate his memory on Jan. 6, the anniversary of his death.

And people whose lives he had touched by simply being Teddy Roosevelt came, too, often uninvited, and asked to see the house. Boy Scouts and townspeople and journalists, too. "They would knock on the door and Mrs. Roosevelt would generally receive them, usually dressed all in white or all in black for mourning," said John A. Gable, executive director of the Theodore Roosevelt Association.

Edith Roosevelt lived on in the Victorian mansion in Cove Neck for more than a quarter century until her death at age 87 in 1948. There were frequent visits from four of her children living nearby and their children. Ted and Kermit had their own houses in Cove Neck; Archie lived in Cold Spring Harbor, and Ethel lived in Oyster Bay hamlet.

Within months of T.R.'s death, the newly formed Roosevelt Memorial Association -- later renamed the Theodore Roosevelt Association -- approached his widow with a proposal to buy the house. The group wanted to turn it into a museum and build a presidential library on the grounds, both novel concepts at the time.

Sagamore Hill today (Newsday Photo/Bill Davis)

Roosevelt addresses a crowd in 1917 from a porch at Sagamore Hill (Sagamore Hill National Historic Site Photo/National Park Service)

But Edith Roosevelt wanted to stay in the house where she had raised a family and leave it to her eldest son. But Ted, a brigadier general who won the Congressional Medal of Honor for leading an assault on D-Day, died in France of a heart attack during World War II. Later, the association approached her again and she agreed that the group should be allowed to buy the house after her death. In 1950, the 23-room mansion with its contents and surrounding 83 acres was purchased by the association. After three years of restoration that brought the cost of the project up to $400,000, it was opened to the public on June 14, 1953, at a ceremony featuring President Dwight D. Eisenhower and former President Herbert Hoover.

The Theodore Roosevelt Association also purchased Theodore Jr.'s adjacent Old Orchard home for $115,000 after his wife's death in 1960.

The association operated Sagamore Hill as a museum until 1963 when the house and Old Orchard were donated to the National Park Service along with an endowment. Old Orchard opened as a museum in 1966.

When the association acquired Sagamore Hill, the house was a little run-down. But there had been only minor alterations over the years. Electricity had been added and rooms repainted or repapered. Mrs. Roosevelt had removed the tin ceiling in the parlor. Before the house was opened to the public, the first of several major restoration projects was completed.

One 1985 project resulted in the mustard yellow and green exterior color scheme being replaced by blue-gray and gray. This was designed to reflect the appearance of the house from the later years of T.R.'s presidency until his death. In 1993, the house was closed for six

Skins cover the floor in Roosevelt's library. (Sagamore Hill National Historic Site Photo/National Park Service)

months to allow many of the rooms -- which reflected different periods of the Roosevelts' life at Sagamore Hill -- to be restored to a more unified and historically accurate appearance of the house as it was from 1901 to 1919.

Today, Theodore Roosevelt's presence still pervades Sagamore Hill. Visitors can see such remembrances of the nation's 26th president as his Rough Rider hat, sword and binoculars hanging from elk antlers in the North Room, the bronze rhino in the front hall where Edith used to put her hat and the boys left phone messages, and the family's presidential china set on the dining room table as if dinner were about to begin.

The grounds have changed over time as well. Trees have grown up around the house, almost entirely blocking the panoramic views T.R. loved of Oyster Bay and Long Island Sound. When the Roosevelts were in residence, much of the property was used for farming or allowed to grow into meadows. Now the Park Service maintains manicured lawns, although there have been recent efforts to re-establish the estate's historic appearance -- including outlining T.R.'s old tennis court in the woods.

More changes are coming. The antiquated exhibits in the Old Orchard Museum will be redone by the year 2000. A contract has been signed to connect Sagamore Hill to the Oyster Bay Water District so there would be water service for firefighting. Currently, drinking water comes from local wells and firefighters would have to draw their water from Oyster Bay Harbor.

The Park Service also hopes to replace the old wiring in the mansion. That would allow installation of upgraded lighting to improve visitors' ability to see into the rooms without damaging fabrics.

Meanwhile, the famous and the ordinary still make pilgrimages to Sagamore Hill, to walk in the rooms where Theodore Roosevelt comes alive. Last year, there were 96,500 pilgrims.

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This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/ny-history-hs622b,0,1099509.story?coll=ny-top-headlines

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