Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt

Springwood is the only place in America where a president was born, kept a lifelong home, and was laid to rest. Franklin Delano Roosevelt drew his sense of place from this Hudson River estate, returned to it throughout the twelve years he led the nation through the Great Depression and the Second World War, and built on its grounds the first presidential library — the model for every one that followed. To walk the house is to stand at the emotional and intellectual anchor of the man who redefined the American presidency.

The core of the house began as a farmhouse around 1800. In 1867 FDR's father, James Roosevelt, purchased the estate he named Springwood, and it was here on January 30, 1882, that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born. He grew up an only child on these grounds, riding, sledding, and collecting birds along the Hudson, and he considered Springwood home for the whole of his life.

In 1915 and 1916, FDR and his mother Sara remodeled the frame house into the dignified Colonial Revival mansion seen today, adding fieldstone wings and a columned portico to designs by architect Francis L. V. Hoppin. During his presidency the estate became a working retreat and 'Summer White House.' In 1939 it hosted King George VI and Queen Elizabeth — the first visit of a reigning British monarch to the United States — a gesture of Anglo-American solidarity on the eve of war.

In 1941 Roosevelt dedicated the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library on the grounds, pioneering the idea that a president's papers belong to the people. He had already deeded much of the estate to the nation. FDR died at Warm Springs, Georgia, on April 12, 1945, and was buried in Springwood's Rose Garden on April 15; Eleanor Roosevelt was laid beside him in 1962. The estate is now preserved by the National Park Service as the Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site.