My spouse and I
visited Sagamore Hill National Historic Site (also called the Theodore
Roosevelt home/summer White House) on a Saturday afternoon in early May 2018.
We booked our tour a few weeks ahead using the online National Park Service’s
(NPS) www dot recreation dot gov website; tickets for a guided tour (the only
way to see the inside of the home) cost $10 per person. Sagamore is open from 9:00
am until 5:00 pm Wednesdays through Sundays. The email confirmation that we
received told us to check in at the Visitor’s Center 30 minutes prior to our
tour, which was too much time, in our opinion. If you allow 15 minutes, you can
check in, use the restrooms, quickly browse the bookstore/gift shop, and then
leisurely stroll up the paved paths to the mansion. However, if you arrive even
earlier, you can visit the onsite Roosevelt Museum at Old Orchard. We suggest that
you allow at least one hour
to view the chronicles of the life and career of the former president set up in
the former residence of Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt Jr. and his family, stroll the grounds, or participate in a
ranger walk down the nature trail to Cold Spring Harbor (allow an additional 45 minutes for the nature
walk). Access to the grounds and the Old Orchard Museum is free; you only pay
to tour the house.
Sagamore Hill is
located in the village of Cove Neck near Oyster Bay Long Island. (We ate Saturday
brunch in downtown Oyster Bay prior to our tour, and it took about 5 minutes to
drive from there to Sagamore on winding country backroads.) Sagamore was the
home and “Summer White House” of the 26th President of the United
States, Theodore Roosevelt, who served from 1901 to 1909 and occupied the house
for over 30 years (from 1885 until his death in 1919). He was such a notable president that an image
of his face is carved into Mount Rushmore, along with George Washington,
Abraham Lincoln, and Thomas Jefferson. Roosevelt died at Sagamore Hill on January 1919
from a pulmonary embolism; his wife Edith passed away in 1948. They had five
children (Theodore Jr. and Kermit, Ethel, Archie, Quentin), three of whom were
born at Sagamore. A marker for son Quentin (who died in France during World War
I) is located on the grounds at Sagamore; however, his remains lie in the
American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer next to his brother, Theodore Jr.,
who died during World War II
in Normandy of heart trouble. (My spouse and I visited that cemetery and saw
those side-by-side graves in August 2017 as part of a tour of Normandy and the
D-Day sites.) Sagamore Hill was listed on the National Register of Historic
Places on October 15, 1966.
Theodore
Roosevelt was a native of New York City. (My spouse and I toured his childhood
home on East 20th Street back in mid-January 2017.) However, Teddy spent many
summers during his youth on vacations with his family in the Oyster Bay area
(at a home they called “Tranquility”). In 1880, at the age of 22, Roosevelt
purchased 155 acres of land on Cove Neck for $30K (equal to about $760K today)
to build a 22-room, shingle-style, Queen Anne home that was finished in 1886
and cost nearly $17K to build (equal to about $460K today). Roosevelt had initially
planned to name the house "Leeholm" after his first wife, Alice
Hathaway Lee Roosevelt; however, she died during the building process
(coincidentally, on the exact same day as Teddy’s mother). In 1885, Teddy’s
sister Anna first occupied the house along with his daughter Alice (named after
her mother). When Roosevelt remarried a year later to his childhood friend
Edith Kermit Carow, he changed its name to "Sagamore Hill". (“Sagamore” is the Algonquin word for “chieftain”.) In
1905, Roosevelt expanded the house to 23 rooms, when he added the large North
Room for approximately $19K (about $517K today). The rooms in the house are
furnished with taxidermy (including bearskin rugs), trophies from the
president’s hunts, gifts, and original furnishings and decor (so guests are
asked not to touch anything; in fact, if you lean too far over the “velvet
rope” in any room, a motion-detector alarm will sound). The home even contains a
water closet with a porcelain tub, which was a luxury at the time of its
construction. Guests view three floors of rooms, accessible by staircase. (Only
the main level appears to be handicap-accessible.)
We enjoyed our visit to Sagamore Hill; however, we wish that we had arrived
earlier so that we could have fully explored the grounds and the museum.
