Lincoln's cottage a gift to be preserved
WASHINGTON -- Presidents labor mightily to get to Washington, D.C., and then leave every chance they get. George Washington escaped frequently to nearby Mt. Vernon; George Bush to his ranch in Texas.
But before Camp David and Air Force One, presidents who lived any great distance from the capital were pretty much stuck there for the duration of their terms. And for most all of the 19th century it wasn't much of a city.
The city abutted a tidal swamp; it was dirty; it smelled; and its summers were notoriously humid and hot. And the urge to get away that comes over all presidents came over Abraham Lincoln. He had another reason for wanting to get away. His 11-year-old son Willie had just died, it's believed of typhoid, and the White House now had painful memories for Lincoln.
In June, 1862, Lincoln, Marty Todd and their surviving younger son, Tad, decamped from the White House and moved three miles north to a cottage on the park like grounds of the Soldiers' Home, an estate that had belonged to a prominent banker that was now a refuge for disabled soldiers and a national cemetery where the war dead were now coming in at the rate of 30 to 40 a day.
"Cottage" is a relative understatement for the white, two-story, 34-room house with its deep porch and airy, spacious public rooms. The Lincolns loved it and spent June to November there for three years, one quarter of his presidency.
He commuted to work each day, 45 minutes by horseback or carriage, on streets that still exist though are now mercifully paved. He did so with such regularity that his aides worried he'd be either kidnapped or assassinated. One resident who frequently saw him pass by was Walt Whitman.
Lincoln is said to have roughed out his ideas for the Emancipation Proclamation at the cottage and thought out his strategy for bringing the war to an end.
The White House has been renovated many times since the Lincolns lived there. The Lincoln Bedroom is not really the Lincoln bedroom. Of the places left, his presence is perhaps most intensely felt in this cottage.
What saved the cottage is perhaps that people simply forgot about it. The encyclopedic 1937 WPA Federal Writers' Project guide to Washington makes only passing reference to "an old gray stucco homestead" used by presidents Buchanan, Lincoln, Hayes and Arthur as a summer residence.
The cottage wasn't even declared a national landmark until 2000. Now, after a seven-year, $17 million restoration by the National Trust for Historic Preservation the cottage will open to the public on Tuesday, the day after President's Day.
The rooms are painted in their original color, thanks to the careful examination of 22 layers of paint. The woodwork and marble fireplaces are original. And, based on old photographs of the interior, it has been furnished with antiques authentic to the period.
Lincoln was a great president, justly honored for presiding over a perilous and transformative in our history, and his memorial on the Mall with its brooding, seated statue by Daniel Chester French, is one of the capital's most moving.
What the cottage shows is that sometimes a president is just a guy who wants to get away from the heat.
(Contact Dale McFeatters at McFeattersD(at)SHNS.com. Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.shns.com)
By: Dale McFeatters
WASHINGTON -- Presidents labor mightily to get to Washington, D.C., and then leave every chance they get. George Washington escaped frequently to nearby Mt. Vernon; George Bush to his ranch in Texas.
But before Camp David and Air Force One, presidents who lived any great distance from the capital were pretty much stuck there for the duration of their terms. And for most all of the 19th century it wasn't much of a city.
The city abutted a tidal swamp; it was dirty; it smelled; and its summers were notoriously humid and hot. And the urge to get away that comes over all presidents came over Abraham Lincoln. He had another reason for wanting to get away. His 11-year-old son Willie had just died, it's believed of typhoid, and the White House now had painful memories for Lincoln.
In June, 1862, Lincoln, Marty Todd and their surviving younger son, Tad, decamped from the White House and moved three miles north to a cottage on the park like grounds of the Soldiers' Home, an estate that had belonged to a prominent banker that was now a refuge for disabled soldiers and a national cemetery where the war dead were now coming in at the rate of 30 to 40 a day.
"Cottage" is a relative understatement for the white, two-story, 34-room house with its deep porch and airy, spacious public rooms. The Lincolns loved it and spent June to November there for three years, one quarter of his presidency.
He commuted to work each day, 45 minutes by horseback or carriage, on streets that still exist though are now mercifully paved. He did so with such regularity that his aides worried he'd be either kidnapped or assassinated. One resident who frequently saw him pass by was Walt Whitman.
Lincoln is said to have roughed out his ideas for the Emancipation Proclamation at the cottage and thought out his strategy for bringing the war to an end.
The White House has been renovated many times since the Lincolns lived there. The Lincoln Bedroom is not really the Lincoln bedroom. Of the places left, his presence is perhaps most intensely felt in this cottage.
What saved the cottage is perhaps that people simply forgot about it. The encyclopedic 1937 WPA Federal Writers' Project guide to Washington makes only passing reference to "an old gray stucco homestead" used by presidents Buchanan, Lincoln, Hayes and Arthur as a summer residence.
The cottage wasn't even declared a national landmark until 2000. Now, after a seven-year, $17 million restoration by the National Trust for Historic Preservation the cottage will open to the public on Tuesday, the day after President's Day.
The rooms are painted in their original color, thanks to the careful examination of 22 layers of paint. The woodwork and marble fireplaces are original. And, based on old photographs of the interior, it has been furnished with antiques authentic to the period.
Lincoln was a great president, justly honored for presiding over a perilous and transformative in our history, and his memorial on the Mall with its brooding, seated statue by Daniel Chester French, is one of the capital's most moving.
What the cottage shows is that sometimes a president is just a guy who wants to get away from the heat.
(Contact Dale McFeatters at McFeattersD(at)SHNS.com. Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.shns.com)
By: Dale McFeatters
