Top Cottage

Top Cottage
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
U.S. National Historic Landmark
Location	Hyde Park, NY
Nearest city	Poughkeepsie
Built	1938-1939
Architect	Henry Toombs and Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Architectural style	Dutch Colonial Revival
NRHP reference No.	97001679
Added to NRHP	December 09, 1997

Top Cottage, also known as Hill-Top Cottage, in Hyde Park, New York was a private retreat designed by and for Franklin D. Roosevelt. Built in 1938-1939, during Roosevelt's second term as President of the United States, it was designed to accommodate his need for wheelchair accessibility. It was one of the earliest such buildings in the country, and the first designed by a disabled person.

Although it was meant as a retreat, FDR also received notable guests at the cottage, including Britain's King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. He had meant to retire there along with his cousin Margaret Suckley, who had helped him choose the site, but died in office. His son sold it shortly after the war, and after half a century in private ownership it was restored and given to the National Park Service, which today operates it as part of the nearby Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1997. Guided tours of the cottage are available from the main site.

Building and site

The cottage is in the Dutch Colonial Revival architectural style, built of fieldstone. It is one of several buildings in Hyde Park and surrounding communities that FDR saw to it were built in that style, which he hoped to revive in the region. It is located at the end of Potters Bend Road, a residential street in a rural area of Hyde Park, at the top of the 500-foot (152 m) ridgetop unofficially known as Dutchess Hill. In FDR's time, it had commanding views of the Hudson River and the Catskill Mountains, now obscured by trees.

History

In 1933, Roosevelt realized his family home in Hyde Park did not offer him sufficient distance from the pressures of the presidency. He realized he would need a more isolated retreat, "a small place to go to escape the mob..."

Floor plan as sketched by Roosevelt.

Two years later, Roosevelt and his cousin Margaret Suckley, spent some time together on the top of the hill, with a view over the Hudson River to the Catskill Mountains, and were both impressed by the possibilities. He would refer to it as "Our Hill"; she as "the nicest Hill in Dutchess County". In October of that year he suggested it would be the perfect spot for "a one-story fieldstone two-room house ... one with very thick walls to protect us." She responded enthusiastically, with a sketch that looks similar to the finished building.

Roosevelt at first envisioned it as where he would live aftrer his presidency, and bought the 118-acre (47 ha) hillside parcel in 1937, after his re-election. By that point in his life, he was mostly confined to a wheelchair due to his polio-related paralysis and could only walk short distances with great difficulty and assistance (a fact he and others concealed from the public). He designed the cottage to accomodate the wheelchair, with one flat floor and everything he could want or need located within easy reach of someone in a sitting position. Top Cottage is the only presidential residence, other than Thomas Jefferson's Monticello and Poplar Forest, designed by a president. It is also the first accessible building designed by a disabled person.

He brought in Henry Toombs to help finish the design, who suggested Roosevelt be credited as architect despite his lack of professional training or experience, angering some Republican architects when an article about the cottage doing exactly that ran in Life magazine. The next year it would be host to the famous picnic where Roosevelt cooked and served hot dogs to Britain's King George VI and Queen Elizabeth on the first state visit to the United States by a British sovereign. His original intention to use it as a retirement home were put on hold when he won an unprecedented third term the next year. But he continued to use Top Cottage as a retreat, bringing important visitors such as Winston Churchill there to discuss the atomic bomb, as well as close friends like Suckley, who took the only two published photos of him in his wheelchair on the cottage's porch.

File:FDR in wheelchair.jpg

One of Suckley's photographs of Roosevelt in his wheelchair

After Roosevelt's death, his son Elliott lived there for a while. He made some renovations, such as adding dormer windows and a mud room. Later he sold the house to the Potter family, who gave their name to the street leading to the home. It remained in their possession until 1996, when it was sold again to the Open Space Institute (OSI). The following year it was recognized as a National Historic Landmark, and the OSI began renovations, removing Elliott Roosevelt's additions and thinning some of the trees that had obstructed the view. In 2001 it was turned over to the National Park Service to be made part of the existing historic site.

External links

• Official Site
• Vall-Kill, Stone Cottage: 3 measured drawings, at Historic American Building Survey