Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt

I think the GPS coordinates for the place happen to be a little bit off so expect some time to explore the grounds. The gift shop and architecture are fun to peruse. Overall this is an educational place to visit. The place is very wheelchair accessible so this is a recommended site for bringing elderly or individuals with physical movement limitations.

When I was in elementary school, i went to this place like every year. I also went with girl scouts. Personally, it was never a bad trip. I learned something new every time and i had an enjoyable experience. I believe there is a trail in the woods to another estate and i had a blast in fourth grade running through the woods, excited to learn information. This place is the reason Hyde Park is a historic town. I enjoy living here, and I love the knowledge I can gain from my town.

Came here as part of a bus trip to the CIA which is just down the road. This is the childhood home of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He also spent his adult life here. There is his library on the grounds. He is the only president who had s presidential library built and was able to use as well.
Unfortunately, our tour was limited by time and really couldn’t appreciate the grounds. This was especially of the library which provided some historical prospective of the Great Depression.
I definitely plan on returning for a more thorough visit here.

First let make an obvious point that a lot of the reviews and pictures for this Unilocal listing are in the wrong spot. The tour of Springwood, aka FDR’s house, is not the Presidential Library and Museum. While it’s true that you can get tickets for both places at the same visitor center, there is an appropriate Unilocal listing for both spots yet few seem to use them.
The logical starting place if you’re going to see the house would be to go to the visitor center. It’s open daily from 9 – 5 and the rangers there are really decent about setting you up with tickets for both the house and the library along with every brochure possible for everything the NPS has in the Hyde Park area.
After getting your tickets you should hit up the 22 minute long movie which starts at the top and bottom of every hour. A Rendezvous With History will introduce you to the Roosevelt experience in terms of a brief overview of their lives told partially by one of the grandsons and for what you’ll be seeing at the house.
House tours meet up in the area just outside of where the movie starts and after the ranger gives you a brief overview of FDR and of Springwood they walk you over to the house. Then sort of like at the Vanderbilt Mansion you get an explanation about some of the rooms and features of both the first floor and the part of the second floor you’re allowed to see before they cut you loose to look around.
We had Ranger Mike and he was great. He gives you a very good overview of FDR’s somewhat complicated living situation and part of the reason why Val-​Kill comes into existence (this is never «their house» and aside from the last four years of FDR’s life it’s not even «his house» as the house belonged to his mother Sara who ran it with an iron fist and only died four years before him) along with the reasons why FDR and Eleanor never divorced even after his multiple infidelities (strong armed $$$ pressure regarding FDR being cut out of his mother’s will if he divorced Eleanor).
He also gave a brief humorous anecdote that before they filmed the movie Hyde Park on the Hudson he spent a few hours with Bill Murray and with Laura Linney showing them around the grounds and the house. The anecdote ends with the punchline that apparently they listened to nothing he told them because the movie supposedly was set in Hyde Park but was actually shot in the UK and he said that 90% of what you see in the movie is complete made up fiction that they try to pass off as fact.
This next part is my own personal opinion. While the house is very nice looking from the outside, this is not the Vanderbilt mansion. This place is in reality fairly plain and very cluttered with a lot of stuff everywhere in every room. It sort of blows my mind to think of the King and Queen of England actually coming here to visit (I almost forgot that Mike told a good story about FDR and his mother getting into a huge fight — don’t forget that he’s the sitting President of the US at this point– about whether or not to take down some anti-​British monarchy cartoons which are on the one wall. I won’t mention how the story ends but the King does see the cartoons and it shows that even though FDR was the President, in his own house he controlled nothing). The neatest thing to me is that what you’re looking at is more or less all original and is not a bunch of guesses or reproductions like you get at a lot of NPS locations.
Don’t get me wrong in that this is a five star stop all the way but if you’re in the Hyde Park area, the Vanderbilt Mansion is far more of an ooooh/​ahhhh type of tour stop and Val-​Kill has much more depth.
If you go: You can only get access to the inside of Springwood via a ranger led tour. The outside grounds are free the same as the visitor center & its 22 minute movie but the house tour will set you back $ 9 per adult with kids fifteen and under being free. You can either roll the dice and show up for a tour or for a small fee you can pre-​reserve your tickets at
.
Tours are capped at fifty (we had around forty for our tour) which for the inside of the house is in reality way too many. As an FYI, several rangers and volunteers at all the Hyde Park NPS sites told us that while things are getting more «back to normal» they are still feeling the effects of the PBS documentary, meaning that they’re still very busy compared to their visitation numbers prior to the documentary so plan accordingly.
Tour times from November to April are 10:30, 12:30, 2:30 and 4:00 and in the high season they throw in extra times at 9:30 and 11:30 plus others based on demand. For the sake of full disclosure, I have a 4^th grader in my household so the house tour itself it cost me $ 0.
The visitor center also has a very large gift shop/​book store and in season from April to October a small cafeteria so that if you’re going to make most of a day or two out of things you can since all tickets are good for two days plus there is on site food.

The FDR Presidential Library and Museum, which includes the nation’s first Presidential Library and the only one to actually be used by the President it celebrates during his presidency (then again, of course FDR was the only President to be elected to four terms!) as well as his familial homestead was open free-​of-​charge on a beautiful and unseasonably warm December day when we were fortunate enough to visit. The Home is only open via timed, guided tours which are conducted by National Park Rangers (all of whom will show you much the same tour, but each of whom has developed his or her own distinct narration); your ticket also allows entry to the Library and Museum, which has state of the art multimedia displays taking visitors through the traumas and triumphs of FDR’s terms in office. The homestead cuts a more elegant profile from the exterior than the interior, which is remarkably cluttered and unpretentious for such an esteemed family, but it makes up in historical value for its lack of aesthetics. The trees are too tall and thick to allow for views of the Hudson River, but the grounds include Franklin and Eleanor’s burying places adjacent to a small rose garden. The Visitor Center includes a gift shop and information desks as well as public facilities (an additional set of facilities is located in the stables, which no longer house horses), but the (small) canteen was unfortunately closed for the season and although the Visitor Center and Library are accessible, the historic house is not, somewhat ironically since the artifacts there include FDR’s own wheelchair, displayed in the historic lift he used to get upstairs!

Just happened to come here on National Public Lands Day, so admission was free! Awesome. Only paid for the guided tour. There is SO much to see here… get ready to spend at least a full day between the house and the museum. Tickets are valid for 48 hours, so spend two days here if you can. It’s absolutely worth it.
Definitely go downstairs in the museum and check out FDR’s model ship collection and his car. The man drove a stick shift without his legs. Respect.

Excellent.
1) The home is entered only through a guided tour.
2) With the tour ticket of the home, you can enter the FDR Library and Museum.
3) If you like American history, it is a must visit.

This is a great place to visit. It’s a home that goes back a century or so, and all the furnishings inside are pretty much what they were when the Roosevelts lived here. It’s a great time capsule. And everything about this place provides marvelous insight into FDR, who he was, his life and times, and America in the years he lived. Don’t miss seeing this place if you’re ever in the area.

We really enjoyed the guided tour of FDR’s home. Our guide Dan was very knowledgable and friendly. The home has been well preserved and we were able to see many rooms, collections and even clothes and hats of FDR. I left the tour knowing a lot more about this amazing man, how he lived and worked, and his relationship with Eleanor and his mother Sara.

You can only take a tour of the inside of the house. The Ranger gives you a quick detail of the place, and lets you roam inside on your own pace.
The tour of the house took about an hour, and then you were allowed to roam the grounds. FDR and Eleanor are buried to the right of the house (or left of the museum). Don’t miss it as you walk back to the museum.
If you’re pressed for time, I would say take the tour, and skip the museum for next time, as the museum has a lot of detail that you would want to spend time looking at, and not rushing.

This was a nice place to visit. You have to sign up for the tour because they will not let you in without a tour guide to chaperone you. Everything in the house was once owned by the Roosevelts and the tour guide watches to make sure you do not touch anything. You can see how the Roosevelts lived and just how thin everyone was back then since the furniture was built for skinny people. You can see how skinny you could be if you said no to McDonalds! Try to make sure you find a tour that is not crowded. We had a crowded tour and fighting to see what is inside and taking pictures can be a hassle. Many people like to stop and stare for a long time but are inconsiderate that there are people behind them that want to see too.

The tour of FDR’s childhood and adult home takes about an hour and starts at the Visitors’ Center with your Parks guide. Ours was very knowledgeable — her thesis of the talk was FDR’s own understanding of his family’s consequence and obligations in his career and professional duties due to growing up in Hyde Park.
Obliquely, she also mentioned Eleanor’s evolution as a society wife to a progressive politician in her own rights, although there’s more information in the separate Library & Museum. (A bit of what El went through: a crap childhood; six children in 10 years; living in the same house, even with its 35+ rooms, with one’s mother-​in-​law, who ADORED her only son.)
Anyway, the first two floors of the house are open, and you can peek into some living rooms, dining rooms, and library on the 1^st, and bedrooms where heads of state and royalty stayed along with the adults of the family on the 2^nd. It’s all heavy dark wood interior, so it’s a little hard to see, even on a sunny day. (Plus, the windows have preservation blinds.) We visited on a beautiful Sunday and made it to the 11:30 group — which was perfect, as the later tours, which we saw, were double or triple our group’s size. You have some time after the tour to walk the grounds, the stables, and the rose garden where Eleanor and FDR are buried.

Great place to spend the day. The tour of the house is OK! The real gem, for me was the Library. I watched the depression sequence and saw a lot of comparisons between the events of the Great Depression and our Great Recession. Get there and plan to spend a lot of time.

What a fantastic place!!! So insightful & educations. I highly recommend it to anyone who’s interested in American history!!! Highly exceeded my expectations. Don’t miss the museum — the chronological history of FDR & Eleanor’s life is phenomenal.

SO GREAT. If you thought you knew it all, you simply don’t. I suggest bringing children, bringing elderly and bringing your BFF. The history running through the veins of this property is prominent and beautiful. Dramatic and insightful. Take ALL of the tours (affordable and worth the walk, or tram ride, in my handicapped grandmothers case) The house is magnificent and overwhelming, the gardens are incredible, and even the food was great. It had been a bucket item on my grandmother’s list to visit this beautiful place, and now it’s on mine to bring my children. SO NICE. They insist you take pictures, the guides are quite educated and willing to answer the most bizarre of questions in a meaningful manner. Pay for the tour, it’s worth it.

My big complaint was that there were about 50 people in our group for the tour and it was so crowded in the house it was almost impossible to move. I couldn’t see into any of the rooms because of all the people. It was a very uncomfortable experience and I would only recommend the tour of the house if you are in a small group.

What a tease– I would love to sit in that library and at Eleanor’s desk and in the veranda overlooking those beautiful acres of chestnut trees and the Hudson River. Amazing artifacts, artwork, furniture — all very overwhelming to take in at one viewing.
Liked the tour guide but I really wished he would attribute the wealth of the Vanderbilts and Roosevelt’s not just to «their industrious ancestors» as the guided stated, but rather to my enslaved ancestors in the Caribbean and south on sugar plantations. That omission just irks the heck out of me. I will be writing the parks dept to redress this omission

I found this place to be pretty interesting. I’m not a history buff but I feel I came from here knowing so much about the Roosevelt’s…and FDR & Eleanor are actually buried here!
Our tour guide Ray, was funny and has been a tour guide here for the last 10 years so the man knows his stuff!
If you’re near the area or even around it I’d consider stopping by!

I had a great time on the tour. They are indeed strapped because of the yearly budget battles, so some times were sold out. The tour was fairly short, started with about five minutes at the visitor’s center, a walk to the rose garden and the graves of FDR and ER, and then a brief talk in the front of the house before going in.
Our tour guide was Ray, and he was great. No, this isn’t a palace (it’s a bit smaller in certain ways than I expected) but this is still a tremendously interesting place due to it being the backdrop of a number of important events in the 1930s and 1940s.
There are a few things out that kids could (and shoudn’t) touch in the downstairs, but most of the upstairs is enclosed by plastic barriers.

After all of the remodeling and updates are in place, I’m going to need a sixth star to rate the experience.
I caught up with the 11:30AM tour group which is the only way you can see the interiors of the actual FDR residence. There is a large mosaic tiled map on the floor of the compound in the visitors center where the tour starts. There are many different residences on the property, but the tour I focused on was the home, the library and the museum ($ 14).
The first building in the tour on the grounds we passed was the Presidential Library which was being remodeled so the books and papers, as explained by the docent, were temporarily moved to the Bush Presidential Library in Texas for the duration.
The second building was the FDR residence. Before entering the home, we were shown the window to the office where heads of state met with the President. We were also told of the additions and improvements to the home before entering. The rules were look but don’t touch, no photography and no food or drink.
After entering the home, we were lectured about the President’s hobbies, how his mother owned the home before he did so much of the furnishings were hers, and how the home changed hands from the family to the National Archives in 1945. The rooms on display were the parlor, the dining room, the private library/​den and the living room. The second floor was being refurbished so we were offered to see the kitchen and the servant’s quarters instead.
There were 25 of us in our group and on an already humid day, I had to excuse myself because I’m not acclimated to the weather and there was no air conditioning circulating in the home due to preservation efforts.
It took me a few minutes to cool down outside on the bench before light rain showers briefly dampened the afternoon again walking back to the visitor’s center. But the weather as a whole didn’t deter me much from enjoying the grounds, the architecture and the history on display.
If I knew in advance that there were so many projects going on about the grounds, I think the self guided tour would have been a better choice.