Rightful Heritage by Douglas Brinkley

Author:Douglas Brinkley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-02-02T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“I HOPE THE SON-OF-A-BITCH WHO LOGGED THAT IS ROASTING IN HELL”

I

Not all of Franklin Roosevelt’s American adventures in 1937 were on the open sea or in coastal areas. That summer, the president decided to build a new house at the easternmost end of his Springwood estate, on what Daisy Suckley had called “the nicest hill” in Dutchess County.1 He designed a Dutch colonial home, built of stone and surrounded by brush and briar. He dubbed it “Top Cottage.” From this wheelchair-friendly house, the president could take in views of three ranges: to the northwest, the Catskills; to the west, the Shawangunks; and to the southwest, the Hudson Highlands. Closer at hand, meadows and woodlands, which fanned out below the front veranda, would have pleased Andrew Jackson Downing and all the Delanos.

When FDR drove the three miles from the main house in Hyde Park to Top Cottage—his Val-Kill—he could “escape the mob.” Wooded, serene, and unmarred by the prefabricated clutter of the industrial mid-twentieth century, it was a place where the president could relax without disruption. In fact, Roosevelt hoped someday to write his political memoirs at Top Cottage. All of his personal papers would be safeguarded at Springwood, but transporting selections of them to Top Cottage would have been an easy enough task.

Because Daisy Suckley influenced the retreat’s location, some historians have speculated that Top Cottage was the place designed for trysts. However, the house primarily served as a safe-haven for FDR, away from the public gaze, somewhere he could gossip about Livingstons and Vanderbilts, make ham-and-cheese sandwiches for lunch, and mix martinis at sunset. At Top Cottage he never worried about facial stubble or a wrinkled shirt. He was secluded, and surrounded by the sanctified land that invariably gave him a sense of spiritual renewal. “I was driving through the middle part of [Dutchess County] the last time I was here in early August,” Roosevelt told his neighbors at a picnic, “and I was struck by the number of lovely streams we have in the county, not only the larger creeks, like the Wappinger, but also the Krum Elbow and a lot of the smaller creeks, and it occurred to me what a wonderful escape we had.”2

Throughout 1937, Roosevelt continued to plant trees at Springwood under the supervision of Syracuse-based forester Nelson Brown, who reported that he was introducing Asian chestnuts (Castanea crenata) on an experimental plot of Hyde Park.3 Silviculturists hoped this species of chestnut was blight-resistant. Although FDR had objected to the Asian variety being planted in the Okefenokee, he approved its addition to his personal estate; still, he instructed Brown to give the American chestnuts (Castanea dentata) priority. “When you next make a check on the woods I wish you could have someone from the college go through the woods, especially the woods around the oldest white pine grove back of the farm to see if there are many young chestnuts growing,” Roosevelt wrote to Brown. “I have seen a number of them—possibly forty or fifty—ranging from five feet to twenty feet in height.

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