FDR's Mega Mansion: From High Society to Presidency

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  • เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 ม.ค. 2025

ความคิดเห็น • 79

  • @mrs.g.9816
    @mrs.g.9816 ปีที่แล้ว +14

    When my husband and I lived in White Plains, NY, we took a day trip to see this beautiful place. I grew up admiring FDR and Eleanor, and of course, we paid our respects at their gravesite. The interior of their mansion seemed to me a larger version of my maternal grandparents' house - the same, cozy atmosphere with the period furniture.

  • @kathleenevans1201
    @kathleenevans1201 ปีที่แล้ว +3

    We toured the FDR home in 1989. I loved every inch of it from the roof to the ground floor.

  • @krazmokramer
    @krazmokramer ปีที่แล้ว +24

    This beautiful, large mansion is definitely a HOME, not a house! Looks like a wonderful place to live.

  • @SMtWalkerS
    @SMtWalkerS ปีที่แล้ว +3

    I live in a small simple home, and I would never want to live in a home that I could not reasonably clean by myself. But I LOVE looking at these large luxurious houses and I think about what it was like to live there. I love the historic mansions and I am so happy when they are preserved! Thank you for sharing these lovely places with us!

  • @ShyDog827
    @ShyDog827 ปีที่แล้ว +3

    I think this is my favorite home so far(: I think FDR represents our American aristocracy so elegantly; such a warmly decorated home from one of our beloved presidents , left as important beautiful legacy for all if to enjoy👍🏻

  • @JodysJourney
    @JodysJourney ปีที่แล้ว +8

    Fun to see. The home was closed to tours when we were there (some renovations, or Covid, or both, don’t remember). Can’t wait to go back.

  • @shade0762
    @shade0762 ปีที่แล้ว +7

    Hi Great video. I love Springwood one tiny piece of info ... FDR only had one half brother who was over 20 years older - so chances are he played wit cousins or others in the playroom :-) when I visited, it was clear that Eleanor was an unwelcome guest at Springwood - at least until FDRs mother passed - but even then she did nothing to make it her home. Rather she had a separate cottage built on the estate where she felt at home.

    • @virginiasoskin9082
      @virginiasoskin9082 22 วันที่ผ่านมา

      When his mother was still alive and prior to her cottage being built, at dinner time his mother sat at one end of the table and Franklin at the other. Eleanor had to grab a seat wherever she could. His mother was incredibly possessive of her only child. And she held the purse strings. Eleanor was up against a real battle ax. She had always felt unloved and unwanted, being an orphan, and it wasn't until she went to school in Europe that she had the chance to bloom into a capable woman. After their marriage she had to deal with his mother who was stuffy, patrician, and Eleanor was from the Republican side of the Roosevelt family -- Teddy's side. I think Eleanor realized that she would have to make herself without anyone's help. I always found it sad that Eleanor never had a mothering role model which meant that she really didn't mother her children well herself. And with a husband who was either away searching for a cure to his paralysis or off at his political offices she had to hold the fort at home. I am sure she had nannies and helpers, cooks and housekeepers because that is what young society matrons did back then. If only she had been able to enjoy and parent her children in the way they needed. They all grew up indulged by Granny and quite spoiled, with little input from their parents. There was something like 18 marriages between those four children. Oy.

  • @joecesa
    @joecesa ปีที่แล้ว +12

    Great story. I appreciate your trying to stick to the -6 minutes of the episode, and appreciate how you gave a little background about FDR, his family, and his exceptional accomplishments. But he was paralyzed by polio, and wish you expressed that clearly--after our experience of the pandemic, I couldn't help but think of how previous generations (and our medical/research fields) looked at and tried to handle devastating confrontations. I really like and look forward to your work, thanks.

  • @mikenixon2401
    @mikenixon2401 ปีที่แล้ว +42

    I was surprized to see for as weality as the Roosevelts were, their home seemed almost modest oompaired to many wealthy families of that era. Good report.

    • @lou-nc4rc
      @lou-nc4rc ปีที่แล้ว

      It is also modest compared to wealthy families of today. I would like to have been told the square footage of this house. And, where were these many of other houses of FDR? I don't know of any other "mansions," only one very modest house at Warm Springs, GA where he went to take the baths with other paralyzed people. Then there is one other house on the grounds at Hyde Park that was for him, and another for Eleanor. Plus a rambling place at Campobello in Canada, also a park. It was not a mansion, belonged to his family and he vacationed there as a child: in fact this is where he was when he contracted polio. None of the other houses I mentioned, which were added later, are mansions either. Frankly, in comparison with the mega mansions of today which are excessive, it is cozy.

    • @jrod25221
      @jrod25221 ปีที่แล้ว +1

      You must have it good that's not modest maybe for a aristocrat fam like so.

    • @virginiasoskin9082
      @virginiasoskin9082 22 วันที่ผ่านมา

      FDR's mother was the one with the money. Eleanor and Franklin were not super wealthy. Not like the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, Goulds or Vanderblits. No. They were upper class but not mega-wealthy. That is why the furniture is antique and the decor is kept as it was when FDR was alive. This is one reason why Eleanor had Franklin build her a small house of her very own a mile or so away. Springwood was Franklin's MOTHER's house, not Eleanor's. And when his mother died the house stayed as it was. So it is really kind of like a 1930's time capsule. Going and touring it in person gave me the feeling of visiting an older relative's home when I was a child in the 1950s. Homelike, cozy, comfortable; but just with more valuable artwork, many more books, fancier furnishings, china, etc. But it was a house for a FAMILY and FDR and Eleanor's kids would have adored Granny's house -- I could almost hear echoes of their shouting and laughter, running up and down the hallways and down the stairs. Plus there was that long hill behind the house -- a perfect coasting hill! When Franklin had polio he would comfort himself in bed prior to dropping off to sleep by imagining himself riding his sled down that hill and trudging back up to the top, only to sled down it again and again. That was a memory that put him in a happy mood, looking back on his childhood. A happy childhood can get nearly ANY adult through very challenging times and it did for FDR too. I just finished reading a book on Clementine Churchill and they were even less well off than FDR. Churchill's writings (books and articles) were the only thing that kept them solvent. Both men tried different ways to bring in extra money which never panned out.

  • @bholmes5490
    @bholmes5490 ปีที่แล้ว +27

    I read that Sara rebuilt the home to give more room for her son's family. She controlled the purse strings. "In 1915, Franklin D. Roosevelt, together with his mother Sara, undertook a final major enlargement and remodeling of the home. This was done in order to accommodate his growing family, but also to create an environment for entertaining his political associates. Sara commissioned the design work of the firm, Hoppin and Koen from New York City. The size of the house was more than doubled by adding two large fieldstone wings (designed by Roosevelt), a tower, and a third story with a flat roof. The clapboard exterior of the house was replaced with stucco and most of the porch was replaced with a fieldstone terrace with a balustrade and a small columned portico around the entrance. These changes gave the exterior of the house the look of a mansion in Colonial Revival Style."

  • @margaretcapps7207
    @margaretcapps7207 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    Loved the library best!!!

  • @mikemintun1587
    @mikemintun1587 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    This estate is an absolute must-see. Near Springwood is also the FDR Presidential Library and a few miles away is Val-Kil, Eleanor's home and workshops. The U.S. Park Service Docents for these historic properties are nothing short of amazing. They know their stuff and make the tours truly come alive.

  • @steelpaine9932
    @steelpaine9932 ปีที่แล้ว +2

    My goal is to get to see this beautiful home some day, thank you for sharing.

  • @j1st633
    @j1st633 ปีที่แล้ว +6

    I have had the opportunity to visit a few times. A must see.

  • @Shelly-mz9yf
    @Shelly-mz9yf ปีที่แล้ว +2

    The antiques are incredible. Beautiful 😀

  • @Steven-wm9vu
    @Steven-wm9vu ปีที่แล้ว +5

    Always educational, Ken.

  • @jenpink4298
    @jenpink4298 ปีที่แล้ว +5

    That’s a beautiful home!

  • @robertbrown1883
    @robertbrown1883 5 หลายเดือนก่อน

    Beautiful home in the even more beautiful Hudson Valley--and 40 miles from West Point.

  • @shirleybalinski4535
    @shirleybalinski4535 ปีที่แล้ว +4

    This gives the feel of a comfortable English country home, owned by upper middle class( tastful but certainly not pretentious). Seemds a very liveable HOME.

  • @1JamesMayToGoPlease
    @1JamesMayToGoPlease ปีที่แล้ว +4

    I love love love anything FDR, so thank you!! Incidentally, his middle name is pronounced *Del* in-oh :)

  • @sherirunnels545
    @sherirunnels545 ปีที่แล้ว +4

    So interesting. Thank you for your thoughtful and enjoyable videos. Cheers!

  • @litamtondy
    @litamtondy ปีที่แล้ว +6

    Great video! Love your channel!

  • @barbkrieser8972
    @barbkrieser8972 ปีที่แล้ว +4

    Enjoyed this video and loved the children's play room....😊

  • @rickyt3961
    @rickyt3961 ปีที่แล้ว +2

    thank you!

  • @_I_only_work_here
    @_I_only_work_here ปีที่แล้ว +2

    I've taken the tour there several times. Really neat!

  • @janedee6488
    @janedee6488 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    Wonderful video as usual

  • @asylumlover
    @asylumlover 8 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

    I LOVE THIS HOUSE, BUT THATS ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • @christopherkraft1327
    @christopherkraft1327 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    Beautiful home!!! 🏣

  • @andrewholl2108
    @andrewholl2108 ปีที่แล้ว

    Very cool , Thanks for The Stories of all these Tremendous Mansions

  • @lawrenceflynn2447
    @lawrenceflynn2447 ปีที่แล้ว

    Thanks Ken…….very informative ❤

  • @curtisdaniel9294
    @curtisdaniel9294 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    I like the library and the office area best. He is still my personal favorite president. It was sort of a pilgrimage for me to go there.

    • @virginiasoskin9082
      @virginiasoskin9082 22 วันที่ผ่านมา

      Oh me too! Our daughter went to Bard so one day we drove down and toured Springwood and the library, as well as the Vanderbilt mansion. It was a lovely day. I could imagine FDR trying to walk from the house down to the main road on his crutches. It was a challenge he never completed but he tried and tried. It is a long way to go on crutches. You could walk it in five minutes or less normally. Things like that hit you if you have read about FDR and Eleanor, which is why visiting a historic place can be so absorbing and memorable.

  • @virginiasoskin9082
    @virginiasoskin9082 22 วันที่ผ่านมา

    This is NOT a mega-mansion by any means. It is just a big rambling house that feels lived-in and comfortable. Fascinating to tour. His library/museum is right next door.

  • @sashaconrad3939
    @sashaconrad3939 ปีที่แล้ว +2

    This is a great video!

  • @StamperWendy
    @StamperWendy ปีที่แล้ว +3

    The Astors & the Vanderbilts as neighbors & childhood play mates, not too shabby!

  • @raydunbar8985
    @raydunbar8985 ปีที่แล้ว +2

    Fantastic I’ve been many times . I would love to see you cover the Vanderbilt mansion next door .

    • @ThisHouse
      @ThisHouse  ปีที่แล้ว +1

      Great suggestion!

  • @randywatts6969
    @randywatts6969 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    My wife and I visited there in 1990, before the arrival of our children. I most remember the presidents bedroom, with a kitchen chair on wheels for him to get around in there.

  • @Deborah-y5o
    @Deborah-y5o ปีที่แล้ว +1

    Many years ago, my two sisters and I took a short vacation through the Hudson Valley. We had toured a Vanderbilt mansion and then the Roosevelt home which seemed almost spartan after the Vanderbilts'.

  • @HORSEYANIME2024
    @HORSEYANIME2024 ปีที่แล้ว +2

    Pls do more us presidential homes

  • @rosemaryedwards7239
    @rosemaryedwards7239 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    I grew up near Hyde Park. I graduated from FD Roosevelt high school. I used to go to the Roosevelt & Vanderbilt estates! I now live in NM and miss that area so very much!
    Have you done the vanderbilt mansion?
    Thank you!

  • @rjspain56
    @rjspain56 ปีที่แล้ว +4

    I'm glad you featured a photo of the rear of the house showing the original rather plain rear facade of the structure as opposed to the very beautiful front. The juxtaposition between the front and rear is humorous. I toured this place several years ago and was taken by what our docent said about the family. This place was always Sara's house, not Eleanor and Franklin's. Sara must not have been easy to live with and it appears Sara interfered with the disciplining of her grand children. The evidence given by the docent is the fact that the Roosevelt children were much wed and much divorced indicating that their lives were not well grounded.

  • @TomJosephi
    @TomJosephi ปีที่แล้ว

    It would be nice if Hunter College would restore the New York townhouse back to the way it looked when FDR ,Eleanor and Sara Roosevelt lived there, I have visited Teddy Roosevelt's childhood home in Chelsea.

  • @charliesschroedinger
    @charliesschroedinger ปีที่แล้ว +2

    Holy crap... first comment...
    Enjoy your channel

  • @pmn2821
    @pmn2821 ปีที่แล้ว +7

    The house seems to have a facade of grandeur that did not make it to the interiors, IMO

    • @monkeygraborange
      @monkeygraborange ปีที่แล้ว +1

      That depends on your definition of grand. I personally find Springwood an intimate, comfortable _home_ of imposing scale and magnificent American craftsmanship. What the Roosevelt family may have lacked in good sense they certainly made up for in good taste.

    • @pmn2821
      @pmn2821 ปีที่แล้ว

      That's just it, I don't feel the interiors are finished in good taste.

  • @nancydeforge1980
    @nancydeforge1980 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    So interesting to see life in the 40's, including a TV! After Eleanor found love letters , not her's...she slept in a separate bedroom.Sarah discouraged a divorce.

  • @gandydancer823
    @gandydancer823 ปีที่แล้ว

    Just an FYI, FDR had one sibling. A half-brother, James, who was approximately 28 years older than he. His mother Sara only gave birth to one child FDR.

  • @ashishpatel350
    @ashishpatel350 ปีที่แล้ว +8

    Fdr new deal did not pull us out of the great depression. Ww2 did

  • @DMBall
    @DMBall 6 หลายเดือนก่อน

    The idea that the New Deal "pulled America out of the Great Depression," as the narrator claims, is highly debatable. It spawned some needed reforms, but depression conditions persisted until WW2.

  • @toniadugger3954
    @toniadugger3954 ปีที่แล้ว

    He rests between his family dogs…& then there’s Eleanor. Dang.

  • @rabit818
    @rabit818 ปีที่แล้ว

    I wonder if this house was considered tasteful back in the day.

  • @KathyB-x9q
    @KathyB-x9q ปีที่แล้ว

    FDR was an only child. He had no siblings playing with him in the nursery.

  • @antonfarquar8799
    @antonfarquar8799 ปีที่แล้ว +2

    FDR's maternal Grandfather - Delano - had a trading company in China , that is true, he was an opium distributor.

    • @monkeygraborange
      @monkeygraborange ปีที่แล้ว +1

      Shhh... we don’t talk about _that!!_

    • @SMtWalkerS
      @SMtWalkerS ปีที่แล้ว +1

      Was it Balzac? Or Victor Hugo? "Behind every great fortune lies a great crime".

    • @antonfarquar8799
      @antonfarquar8799 ปีที่แล้ว

      @@SMtWalkerS FREQUENTLY !!!!

  • @pacio49
    @pacio49 7 หลายเดือนก่อน

    I had the privilege of growing up in Hyde Park, New York, less than half a mile from the FDR home, and about a mile from the Vanderbilt Home just up the river a little more on the other side of town.
    FDR's Mansion was indeed a country manor home which was part of the same extended wealthy family as cousin Theodore, and his cousin and future wife's family had an estate inland a bit farther called Valkill. FDR's estate was known as Springwood. As a child, I spent most of my summers as a feral Gen X kid on my bikes on the extensive trails that connected the FDR Mansion and the Vanderbilt Mansion, down along the train tracks (before MTA put up the fences) and all along the banks of the Hudson near the center of the village of Hyde Park.
    While yes, it is a Manor home and there is a good deal of wealth there, the Roosevelts were known far and wide as the Country Bumpkins, at least as compared to their next door neighbors, Cornelius Vanderbilt. Until the age of 16, guided tours inside both homes (run by the Federal Park Service) were free for children, so one of the ways that we could get access to air conditioning on a hot summer's day was to lock up our bikes in the bike rack and take whatever the next tour was, in whichever of the two areas we happened to find ourselves.
    Sadly, that skews my perception something mighty fierce. Because if you've ever seen the summer home in Hyde Park of the Vanderbilts, you laugh whenever you hear anyone refer to Springwood (or Valkill) as a 'mansion'. Even the local terminology is starkly different. We in Hyde Park refer to the Roosevelt HOME, and the Vanderbilt MANSION. FDR lived at Springwood full time. And the Vanderbilts used the Hyde Park Mansion as a 'summer cottage' when they weren't out in Newport, Rhode Island. FDR's place has the quaint fieldstone and ugly-assed Dutch architectural style of some anachronistic Jonker or Dutch Patroon from the 1600s, and the Vanderbilt Mansion was a baroque cacophany only imaginable by the "Nouveau Riche" of the Gilded Age of America. Springwood was designed for a large and affluent set of landowners to live like country barons. Vanderbilt Mansion was designed like a palace overlooking the Hudson from high bluffs.
    So, sure. It's a 'mansion' by poor and middle classed modern standards. But compared to the neighbors and the standards at the day, Roosevelts might as well have been poor country trash, compared to the Vanderbilts. And the extensive grounds of both homes show exactly how the use of the homes were intended for different things. Roosevelt spent his youth iceboating along the Hudson, and hunting and farming his property, or at least directing the tenant farmers etc. Vanderbilts owned almost a full half of what became the Village of Hyde Park, with the entire north end of the Village along Route 9 being sold and used as housing developments for the village.
    If you want to attack anyone for being aristocratic or enjoying the finer things in life while being divorced from the plight of the average Americans, it's important to realize that you are barking at the gates of the wrong family home. And yes, for all four elections, FDR never once carried his home county, Dutchess County, because everyone there identified more with the Vanderbilts, as ridiculous as that might seem, and felt themselves to be embarrassed oligarchs themselves, when even if their families had been in the village when Cornelius and wife "Lulu" (she was fond of being driven through the fields and dallying with the farm hands, and that was her nickname, just as all her dalliances were addressed simply as "John") came to town.
    Regardless, both homes are open to the public. Vanderbilts are fun for 'the lifestyles of the rich and famous'. But now on the grounds of Springwood, you have the FD Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, the manor house, and the Presidential Gravesite. Far more of interest and historical value than the idolization of the past glories of a family of robber barons and railroad tycoons from the Gilded Age. (Though the formal gardens of the Vanderbilts and the Lawn are still popular centers of town activity and socialization, thanks to the fact that the Vanderbilts divested themselves of the Mansion and grounds once they had to start paying Income Tax on all properties since it had extensive commercial farms attached.)

  • @brandonpiazza6210
    @brandonpiazza6210 ปีที่แล้ว

    Why do I feel so ambivalent towards that shade of green on the exterior shutters? It’s off right? 🧐

  • @jilltagmorris
    @jilltagmorris ปีที่แล้ว

    FDR had polio

  • @mohameddiaby835
    @mohameddiaby835 ปีที่แล้ว

    4:41
    Really? The room where FDR played with his siblings? Really? FDR was almost an only child. His older brother, James Roosevelt Roosevelt, was 27 years his senior. James, also called Rosy, already had his own family and lived away and therefore, hardly could be considered a playmate to his brother.

  • @WaKincaid
    @WaKincaid ปีที่แล้ว

    Somehow this place seems depressing

  • @darrenforest1492
    @darrenforest1492 ปีที่แล้ว

    Hey Dom, please understand that d!ck heads are going to be dickhesds. You're fresh approach and real life inspirational take on life and the Life is excellent. Cheers from Australia

  • @KCKingdomCreateGreatTrekAgain
    @KCKingdomCreateGreatTrekAgain ปีที่แล้ว

    It was the war time production because of WWII that we got out of the Great Depression not FDR’s policies. In fact his policies had made the depression worse up until then.

    • @lou-nc4rc
      @lou-nc4rc ปีที่แล้ว +1

      I guess you don't think that programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps, which he started and which gave work to many thousands of unemployed young men during the depression....was worthwhile? All over this country you can still see the results of that program. But I won't bother to go on explaining the many beneficial programs he inaugurated because obviously your opinions have no use for fact.

    • @KCKingdomCreateGreatTrekAgain
      @KCKingdomCreateGreatTrekAgain ปีที่แล้ว +2

      @@lou-nc4rc likewise I won’t explain economics and how his policies hampered recovery as facts like that will hurt your brain.

  • @JosephLamb1989
    @JosephLamb1989 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    Was he born female? What was the picture at 0:16? Lol

    • @jamesburtonbud
      @jamesburtonbud ปีที่แล้ว +3

      Back in Victorian times, all babies wore dresses.

  • @Eyedbythetiger
    @Eyedbythetiger ปีที่แล้ว +1

    You mispronounced Roosevelt's middle name. Surprising that you'd make that mistake. In reality, it makes you look like a 2nd tier creator.

    • @jamesburtonbud
      @jamesburtonbud ปีที่แล้ว +4

      You don't understand what an ACCENT IS. Surprising that anyone could make that mistake. In reality, it makes you look like a 2nd tier dipsh*t.