Historic Homes in New York’s Hudson River Valley

May 2022

Within New York’s beautiful Hudson Valley lie 3 NPS historic sites plus one NPS affiliated site: Vanderbilt Mansion, Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt NHS, and Thomas Cole NHS. We camped in the area for a week and visited all 4 locations, plus a state park.

Our first stop was a visit to the Vanderbilt Mansion NHS, which was the spring and fall residence of Frederick and Louise Vanderbilt. Frederick was a grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt. This home is an example of a home constructed during the “Gilded Age” of the late 1800’s. It was donated to the Natl. Park Service and has the original furniture and art.

I was disappointed that the view of the river valley has been mostly obscured, and the grounds are not kept the way they looked in Vanderbilt’s day.

However, volunteers have done a lot of work in the formal gardens. The lupines and poppies were spectacular!

It was difficult to get good photos inside, as it is kept pretty dark. Upper left is Louise’s bedroom, designed to look like Marie Antoinette’s.

Next, we paid a visit to the home of Thomas Cole, the founder of the Hudson River School of painting. His home was about a half-hour farther north of where we were staying. We went on a guided tour of the home. We also saw his small, dark old studio, and his new, light-filled studio, which had many of his paintings on display, including ones that were in progress at the time of his death. Through his writings and idealized paintings, Cole tried to educate people of the need to preserve the natural landscapes that were rapidly being destroyed in the name of progress.

This view of the Catskills from the porch of the home was inspiration for several of his paintings.

Cole’s new studio

Below are just a few of the many paintings on display both in the house and in the studio.

”The Good Shepherd” The last painting Cole completed before he died. On loan from Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, AR (near where we used to live!)

Our next visit was to the home of Franklin D. Roosevelt. We explored the grounds while we waited for our scheduled house tour to start.

The huge library—there is more of the room behind the camera. FDR’s wheelchair is by his desk. He liked to work on his stamp collection there.

FDR’s boyhood room

The chintz room. In 1939, Elizabeth, wife of King George VI and later known as the Queen Mother, stayed here. The beds were made at the factory Eleanor established at Val-Kill, her nearby family home.

FDR’s bedroom

The phone on the wall was the direct line to the White House.

We were not allowed on the third floor, which is where FDR’s and Eleanor’s children had their bedrooms and playroom.

The nearby Eleanor Roosevelt home was not open, but we could walk on the grounds. Just a quick drive down the road from the Franklin Roosevelt home, Val-Kill was a relaxed retreat for Eleanor and Franklin. It was also where Eleanor tested the idea of training rural out-of-work people in handicrafts during the Depression. This idea became a model for New Deal projects. Eleanor lived here after the death of FDR.

Staatsburgh State Historic Site was the Gilded Age home of Ogden and Ruth Livingston Mills. The home is open to the public only on certain days of the week, so we missed our opportunity to go inside. However, we were able to walk around the large grounds, and could view the Hudson River. The house looked like it needed a lot of repairs: we saw some cracked windows and other issues.

View from the hill at the back of the mansion