Roosevelt Homes of the Hudson Valley: Hyde Park and Beyond

By Shannon Butler

Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his family may be most remembered for their time at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but it was the Hudson Valley they called home. In Manhattan, the president's mother built a townhome on East Sixty-Fifth Street, and Eleanor was born on East Thirty-Seventh. On the banks of the Hudson River, Hyde Park was Franklin's birthplace and where he entertained some of the most important leaders of the twentieth century. Up the Albany Post Road, several homes of family and friends played important moments in history. Laura Delano's Tudor-style house was where FDR met with Churchill, and the beautiful Wilderstein was home to Daisy Suckley, a devoted confidante. In Albany as governor, FDR installed a therapy pool in a converted outdoor greenhouse to assist his physical challenges in the Executive Mansion. Historian Shannon Butler traces the historic homes that shaped the Roosevelt family in the Hudson Valley.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Aug 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9781439670866

Shannon Butler

Shannon Butler was born in Poughkeepsie and educated at local schools and universities. She began her career in museums by working at the Senate House State Historic Site in Kingston, New York. While there, she decided to go to college to pursue her passion for history, first attending SUNY-Ulster, followed by SUNY-New Paltz and finally earning her master's in history from SUNY-Albany. She worked with the National Park Service at Roosevelt-Vanderbilt National Historic sites for eight years, where she found her interest in Roosevelt history. In 2018, she became the town historian of the Town of Hyde Park and a year later was also made the historian of the Poughkeepsie Public Library. She is the coauthor of Hyde Park in the Gilded Age, and this is her first solo work.

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Part One

NEW YORK CITY

1

EARLY ROOSEVELTS

New York City has a history that stretches to the early Dutch settlers and to the Native Americans before that. The Roosevelt family could trace their connections to the city almost back to its beginning. By the time the small town of New Amsterdam began to thrive, the Roosevelts had managed to make a home for themselves right in the middle of it all. Claes Martenszen van Rosenvelt was the first of the family to venture from the Netherlands. Though the exact date is unclear, it was most likely in the 1640s when he made his home on the island of Manhattan. The original Roosevelt farm appears to have been located where the Empire State Building currently stands and comprised about fifty acres purchased from Lambert van Valckenburgh.¹ By the eighteenth century, FDR’s great-great-grandfather Isaac Roosevelt had moved the family into the business of sugar. He was one of the first to build a sugar refinery on Wall Street and then moved to Queen Street, now known as Pearl Street, sometime around 1772.

FDR was incredibly proud of his family’s history and heritage, particularly of the accomplishments of his great-great-grandfather Isaac. Isaac Roosevelt was born in 1726 in New York City. Not only did he make the family’s fortune, but he also helped write the history of New York State. Isaac was nominated to serve in the Provincial Congress in April 1775.² He took part in the writing of New York’s state constitution in 1777. After the Revolutionary War, he cofounded the Bank of New York along with friend and fellow Patriot Alexander Hamilton. Isaac married Cornelia Hoffman, whose family owned land in Dutchess County along the Hudson River, and it was there, along the banks of the river, that the Hyde Park branch of the Roosevelt family would eventually find their home. FDR’s pride in his ancestors appeared at an early age, while attending Harvard, when he composed a thesis concerning the Roosevelts of New Netherland and the effects they had on the development of the colony. Later, he would show off his love for Isaac the Patriot by showcasing a portrait of him painted by Gilbert Stuart in the main living room of the family’s house at Hyde Park.

Isaac spent the majority of his time in the city, but in 1752, he made his way up the river to marry his wife, Cornelia, in Rhinebeck and to serve with the state senate in Kingston in 1777. With the success of his sugar business and the wealth that came with his marriage into the Hoffman family, Isaac was able to send his son James to college at Princeton.

James Roosevelt, born in 1760, was part of the fifth generation of Roosevelts since Claes’s immigration to America. He took after his father in the sugar refining business and banking. His residence was located at 18 South Street, where many gentlemen found themselves living very close to their respective businesses. In 1785, only a couple of years after the British occupation ended, Isaac managed to purchase land around the Bowery lane and first street of New York City; ironically, it’s now the area known as Sara D. Roosevelt Park.³ He also had a farm in what is now Harlem, which was customary at the time.

By the 1820s and ’30s, many of these gentlemen found themselves in a sort of flight northward as more and more immigrants made their way into lower Manhattan, and eventually, James moved to 64 Bleecker Street between what is now Greenwich Village and East Village. This became his main residence in the city in his later years. Of course, nothing remains of any of the early Roosevelt residences in New York City. It is clear, however, that when Claes, Isaac, James and even FDR’s father, also named James, lived here, much of what we now call the city was open land that would be farmed, altered, manicured, developed and redeveloped.

2

DELANO RESIDENCE, COLONNADE ROW

One of the earliest residences that we can still find evidence of is from FDR’s maternal side of the family, the Delanos. FDR’s mother, the formidable Sara Delano Roosevelt, was convinced that her son was a Delano first and a Roosevelt second. Her family had roots in America going back even further than the Roosevelts, since Phillip Delano had made his way to Plymouth Colony in 1621. FDR’s love of sailing ships and maritime history came from the stories of early family merchants like Ephraim Delano sailing along the coast of the colonies in the mid-eighteenth century. He also enjoyed hearing about Captain Warren Delano, who was captured by the British navy during the War of 1812—not once but twice. He loved hearing the stories of his mother, who, as a little girl, sailed to China with her mother and siblings to join her father, who was involved in his latest venture in the trade of tea and opium. It was this man, Warren Delano Jr., who would make the family immensely wealthy and was able to move them into some exquisite homes along the Hudson.

In 1846, Warren Delano Jr. was living in China with his wife, Catherine; their child, Louise; and his younger brother Edward, who had helped him with business. The brothers had both served in the large American firm Russell and Co., and Warren had been working in and out of China since first sailing there in 1833, when he was twenty-three. However, by 1846, Warren and his wife had lost one child, a daughter named Susan, from sickness; the business of opium trading was dangerous and destructive; and the desire to return home to America was weighing on the minds of everyone in the family. By this time, the Delano family had clearly established a fortune—certainly enough money to sustain a respectable lifestyle back home—so they all agreed to make their way back to the States.

The Delano family had settled in New England in the 1600s, and their main residence was still located in Fairhaven, Massachusettes, but Warren knew that the place to be for trade and potential growth in investments was New York City. It was also fashionable to have a home where one could be seen among some of the most elite families in society. Warren moved the family into an elaborate townhouse at LaGrange Terrace on Lafayette Street, next to his other younger brother Franklin Hughes Delano, who had married Laura Astor a few years before. They had many famous neighbors, including the Vanderbilts, Astors and Washington Irving, living next door in this luxurious complex of buildings now known as Colonnade Row.⁴

This Greek Revival building is said to have been the work of Hudson River architect Andrew Jackson Downing, though other architects have also been credited for its design. The row originally contained nine townhouses built between 1830 and 1832 by Seth Geer. The twenty-seven-foot-wide houses connected to one another, and each contained twenty-six rooms. The front of each house was linked with Corinthian columns made of Westchester marble that was quarried by prisoners at Sing Sing. The design is considered to be borrowed from the British row enclaves of the 1830s.

Laura Astor Delano kept excellent records concerning the day-to-day needs of the household for her and Franklin Hughes Delano at LaGrange Terrace. In 1845, she hired a cook named Catharine Foley at $9 a month, and Ellen Webb came as a chambermaid at $7 a month. Mrs. Higgins would come and clean the house for $5.00, and a man named Dean brought ice to the house quite regularly. She wrote everything from daily purchases, like butter and eggs, to fancier items, like oysters, Madeira nuts and brandy peaches. She must have been preparing for a small party on October 14, 1845, when she paid $3.87 for tea, ice cream, grapes and coconut cake. She would also record when her husband gave her money, and how much, to pay for these various needs and wages. He usually gave her about $100.00 a month, which would be nearly $3,000.00 today, occasionally adding more if there was a need.⁵ We can see that Franklin also wished to have a fine instrument for their home when he ordered a rosewood pianoforte manufactured by Chickering and Mackay’s in Boston for $375.00.

In Warren Delano’s personal accounts, we find that he had an insurance policy on his new residence worth $10,000.00 a year. On the other hand, he paid someone $0.01 per month to store the thirty-two cases of Madeira wine that he had imported from Canton, China, in 1841. Like his brother, he also ordered a fine pianoforte for his residence. From furniture maker George Platt in New York City, he ordered a mahogany bookcase, a pair of Louise XIV pedestals with marble tops and walnut bookcases with glass doors, all at a sum of $390.00. The 1840s was a time of modern advancements, and Warren wished to have new plumbing installed in the house, which included a new bathing tub, water closet, waste and soil pipes and a fifty-two-gallon steam boiler at a cost of about $275.00.⁶ There was a need for fresh paint on all of the floors of the house, including details in the parlors and the main entry hall, which came out to about $564.00.

Colonnade Row, Lafayette Square below Astor Place, 1890. By Robert L. Bracklow. From the collections of the Museum of the City of New York.

Based on the financial records of the family, it was no small feat to keep and maintain this house for any of the Delanos. However, Eleanor Roosevelt would later write in her autobiography that the Delanos were the first people I met who were able to do what they wanted to do without wondering where to obtain the money.⁷

Colonnade Row was exactly the sort of residence—in the perfect neighborhood and with the most recognizable neighbors—that Warren needed to sustain his family’s place in New York society. That his wealth had been made by taking advantage of the opium crisis in China didn’t seem to bother anyone. John Jacob Astor had also taken part in that venture, and both men lived in a time when questionable business deals were likely to be ignored if conducted by those of high birth. The money they made in silks, china and tea was quite enough to sustain their new lifestyles of elegance. It should be noted that the Delano family, with the help of their wealth, also contributed to New York society by building a free hospital for children by 1884. At a cost of about $150,000, the Laura Franklin Hospital was named for their daughter, who tragically burned to death in a freak accident in 1884.

As for Colonnade Row today, there are only four buildings still remaining of the original nine. Numbers 428, 430, 432 and 434 were some of the earliest buildings to be added to the New York City Landmarks, which began in 1965. They are also in the National Register of Historic Places, as of 1976. Though the buildings have been altered somewhat and split into various apartments and businesses, the strong and tall Corinthian columns that made them stand out in the 1830s are just as important and unique in our modern times. It is lovely to imagine the sounds of a pianoforte playing and the sights of the Delano men and women sitting in their finery enjoying their tea, cake and Madeira wine.

3

ELEANOR ROOSEVELT’S CHILDHOOD HOMES

The two most famous Roosevelts born in New York City are Theodore Roosevelt, who went on to become president, and Eleanor Roosevelt, who history would refer to as the first lady of the world. Theodore is part of the Oyster Bay branch of the family, as they would later be known, thanks to the home he called Sagamore Hill that he built in that part of Long Island. Eleanor was both a Hyde Park and an Oyster Bay Roosevelt, as she was the daughter of Theodore’s little brother Elliott and then married into the Hyde Park branch. As a child, she spent time visiting with her Oyster Bay cousins and remembered trying to keep up with her uncle on morning runs to the beach, where the water, and the idea of jumping in with the rest of the family, always frightened