FDR Slept Here
by quasar - Written: Aug 25 '08
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Scenery: |
 |
|
| Time needed for visit: |
 |
|
|
Pros: tour and museum, grounds free, museum rotates exhibits so it's different each time
Cons: library closed to public, house tour unguided, museum rotates exhibits so it's different each time
The Bottom Line: If you only have one day to spend in this region, you should plan your day around a visit to the FDR home.
|
|
|
| quasar's Full Review: Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Si... |
The Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site is the most popular of the several major historical sites located in Hyde Park, New York. The lifelong home of FDR, this site includes a small visitor's center, a tour of the house and grounds, and a museum and library area.
The grounds are open from dawn to dusk and are free to all during those hours. Visitors who just want to wander around outside can do so at their leisure. Guests who want to take a tour or visit the museum and library must check in at the visitor's center and purchase a ticket covering both the tour and the museum. Tours leave approximately once an hour on the hour between 9am and 5pm with a lunch break at 1pm while the museum and library is open continuously from 9 to 5 with re-entry privileges. Tickets are $14 per person but NPS passholders are free. You're assigned to a specific tour when you purchase your ticket; it may or may not be the next tour leaving depending on how busy they are that day.
A low desk with several park rangers selling tickets are situated near the entry of the visitor's center. The rangers there were awful during my most recent visit. They weren't interested in helping folks and didn't mention the introductory movie shown elsewhere in the visitor's center even though I specifically inquired about things to do before our tour started about 30 minutes later. They also failed to give us the tickets we needed to get into the museum which caused us a lot of grief later in the day.
Fortunately my dad stumbled on a sign with the movie schedule and we caught the film that fit in before our tour time. The movie was excellent but the closed captioning was both out of sync and often skipped lines. The film focused on the contributions of FDR to overcoming the depression, fixing the dust bowl, and gearing up for war. It was slightly revisionist in one place regarding FDR's support for joining the war well before we did (the museum as a whole seemed to do this which bothered me a great deal).
The tour itself lasts about an hour. You walk about a quarter of a mile outside, passing the museum, an old driveway lined by trees, the rose garden where both Franklin and Eleanor are buried, and then stops outside the main house for a short introduction to Springwood. Once we go inside the house, we get to wander around on our own for about 15 minutes downstairs (the guide is available for questions but doesn't provide any specific information unless asked or give anything resembling a tour). This downstairs area is full of collections including birds FDR shot and stuffed himself, pictures of 1812 warships, and political cartoons from the War of 1812 to name three sets of items prominently on display. The cartoons were particularly interesting to me and illustrated that the nature of politics doesn't really change much over time.
After this self-directed wandering period, the guide gives us an approximately 10 minute talk about what to expect upstairs before we go up. All of the bedrooms are upstairs and are surprisingly modest. You can also get a good view of FDR's hand pulled elevator operated by very thick ropes; he never added electricity because he didn't want to be trapped upstairs in case of fire.
Visitors are allowed to take photographs without flash, but the whole house is very, very dark inside so unless you have a really high quality camera or the right film you likely won't get many viewable pictures. Our guide was personable and knowledgeable and open to answering questions, but the experience inside the house really didn't feel like a tour since it was so self-directed. I think a real tour with actual and specific information pointed out in real time would be a wonderful addition to the visitor experience here.
We visited the museum and library last and nearly weren't allowed inside. Because the awful rangers at the visitor's center failed to give us tickets to the museum, the guard there tried to deny us entry. Both my dad and I have NPS passes and we tried showing them to the guard since they gave free entry, but he wasn't buying it. We eventually got him to call his supervisor who granted us admission after seeing our NPS passes. We were both pretty annoyed by the whole thing, especially since in the past you didn't have to get tickets if you had passes.
The museum changes its contents frequently. It has four main sections plus two permanent FDR installations (his oval office desk and his actual working study while using the library as his base of operations). During my visit last year, the four sections included an exhibit on FDR as the commander in chief called Freedom from Fear, a section split between artifacts and information on the four presidential campaigns and key turning points of the war, a section with biographically information focused on childhood and early adulthood before FDR's first election, and a section on Eleanor Roosevelt's contributions to the world mostly but not entirely focused on her activities after her husband's death.
The Freedom from Fear exhibit was marvelous. It features a detailed chronology and examination of World War II with a focus on FDR and the relationship between Roosevelt and Churchill with audio excerpts from speeches, timelines, and information on different geographic areas. It's very focused on decisions made in Washington and how they affected the war rather than the battles themselves and was very well organized and displayed.
In most of the other exhibits, the text is very small and difficult to read in many places. There are also some organization problems; for example, there's no physical delineation between the section on presidential campaigns and that on turning points of the war. The introduction to the turning points exhibit appears to be the end of the campaigns section which is more than a bit confusing.
That turning points exhibit includes an interactive simulation where you decide how much aid to give Britain before the United States enters the war. It's interesting in that it shows how much opposition there was to the idea, but it's designed to make you not give aid. The only reason you'd do the right things (in terms of the game) is if you know that's what you have to do to win, but if you play according to the information presented you're not going to "win". That bothered me a lot, as it didn't teach visitors what to do then test them on it, but rather set them up to fail without really explaining in detail why those actions constitute a failure.
The last time I visited the FDR museum they had extensive letters and papers on exhibit and it seemed more library-like rather than strictly a traditional museum. This time it was all museum. To add to that feeling, the actual library is only accessible by appointment and only to people with academic credentials. I really enjoyed reading those letters and really wish they had been a permanent exhibit always on display.
The visitor center has a small store full of Roosevelt books and other memorabilia you might want to hit on the way out of the complex. It stays open 30 minutes after the park closes so you can stop by after everything else is closed.
Expect to spend at least half a day here, possibly a full day depending on the exhibits. The first time I visited (many moons ago) we spent a whole day and weren't quite ready to leave at closing, but this time we were there for about 5 hours and saw pretty much everything. Last time my dad visited (without me) he spent 5.5 hours in the museum alone. It really does vary. If you only have half of a day free, you should definitely still visit, but be prepared to rush or skip some of the exhibits during your visit.
Hyde Park has a lot of sites to interest visitors - several related to the Roosevelts - but the Home of Frankin D. Roosevelt National Historical Site is definitely the largest and most popular. You could easily fill a three day weekend with a visit to Hyde Park and nearby Poughkeepsie visiting this site, the Eleanor Roosevelt National Historical Site, the Vanderbilt Mansion, the Samuel F. B. Morse Historic Site, and other attractions, but if you only have one day to spend in this region, you should plan your day around a visit to the FDR home.
Recommended:
Yes
Best time to go: Anytime
Recommended for: Anybody
Review Topic: Overview
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
