It was President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s idea in 1924 to build a year-round retreat for his wife, Eleanor, to enjoy with her friends Marion Dickerman and Nancy Cook. He gave them a life interest in several acres on his estate in Hyde Park, N.Y., and worked with architect Henry Toombs to design the Dutch Colonial structure. They called the property Val-Kill, Dutch for "waterfall" and "stream."
Stone Cottage, completed in 1925, was home to Dickerman and Cook and a favorite retreat of Mrs. Roosevelt and her family. The following year, they added a furniture factory where local farmers could make furniture, pewter and woven goods in the off-season to supplement their income.
In 1936, Mrs. Roosevelt remodeled the factory for her own use. After her husband's death in 1945, it became her primary residence, the first "home of her own" when she was 55-years-old. Mrs. Roosevelt said Val-Kill was where she began to emerge as an individual, and the place was animated by her political and social causes. Until her death in 1962, this was where she wrote, entertained world leaders, political figures and local school children and where she worked as a delegate to the United Nations.
In the 1970s, when Val-Kill was sold and a plan proposed to make it a health facility, local citizens campaigned to create instead the Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site, the first and still the only National Monument to a First Lady. Today, thanks in part to a partnership between the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Save America’s Treasures, and HGTV, this historic property is being preserved as a memorial to Eleanor Roosevelt and her ideals of justice and human dignity.
Sites in the 2004-2005 Restore America: A Salute to Preservation campaign.
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