Theodore Roosevelt's Birthplace

A few days before I left New York for India, Mike, a professor who taught literature at Baruch College, and I met for breakfast to talk about his subject. Last time we met was in Sitka and we talked mine, history. We aired our likes and dislikes on literature. We talked about the Nobel Prize and noted that neither of us had ever won it and wondered why that was so. Mike introduced me to eggs and pastrami and that was a most delicious breakfast. When we finished he collected his things and left to check on how his wife’s physical therapy was going and I found myself downtown with some time on my hands.

David Nordlander, who had been my history guide the weekend before had told me that the Theodore Roosevelt Birth Place was a must see. Furthermore seeing the house, which wasn’t open when he and I were walking, walking, would now be open. Open yes, you go into a servants’ entrance, why I’m not too sure. Could be that NPS is worried about someone toppling off the stairs to the main entrance. The Golden Age Pass saved me $3 and I was told that I had about an hour to look around.

The house is interesting just for its design. To begin with, this is not the original house. No DNA of Theodore Roosevelt around anywhere. They asked him if he wanted his birthplace preserved and he was not interested. About 1920 they leveled the house. Then about 1923 they decided that that was a mistake and some of the family, friends, and anyone else they could interest in rebuilding began the task of money raising and construction. First you tear it down and then you rebuild….I had nothing to do with it but it does sound like me. But because this was a house for the public, the house was divided down the middle as seen from the street. The east or right side was to be exhibit halls, a workroom/library for scholars, and for any other utilitarian purposes they could think of. The west side (and I do hope I’ve got my directions straight) or the right hand side as seen from the street, where recreated rooms of the period. The good news was that there were plenty of people alive who could remember the house and there was other documentation which was still fresh and available. The thrust of the thinking was what would TR remember about his home. This was not an Upstairs, Downstairs tour. As a matter of fact the ground floor housed today an exhibit room where once the kitchen had been. Of course, I would have really enjoyed seeing what the original kitchen looked like. You can see some of the things we still haven’t learned after a hundred plus years.

This exhibit room (the kitchen) was an overview of TR’s life. The cases were set against the wall with a long island of them in the room’s center and every case had information, photographs, and artifacts concerning his life. There were no railway belt buckles or Cossack uniforms. Some might call it Disneyland but it was a very informative attempt regardless of a name. Had David been there, it would have been interesting to see if he could have read all the labels within the hour before the tour. I read slowly and didn’t get half done, when they called me. Whoever wrote the labels didn’t know that they were supposed to be no longer than 25 words, therefore they were very informative.

One of the great things about TR is that he had a lot objects in his life and the family saved them to the point that several years ago when I did some research for a story, Christie’s was having a TR memorabilia sale. At the “ranch,” the birthplace, Sagamore Hill, and the Smithsonian, there are great collections. No pun intended but he was a man of many hats and the hats and photos of his wearing the hats were saved. His fringed chaps are at the Smithsonian. His sealskin chaps (ring seal) are at the birthplace. His Rough Rider hat hangs in the “great” room at Sagamore Hill. Then there are his bird mounts and some of his trophies at the Museum of Natural History. By the way his father was a founder of that museum and another aside, the father organized a “waif” society. They found kids out on the street and shipped them west on orphan trains for adoption. Some did well. John G. Brady became governor of Alaska and I think there was a Nevada governor also out of that group of children. As I recall either an uncle or the father to Theodore Sr. was a property investor and from time to time would give an extra house away to a family member. That’s is how the house came into the Roosevelt clan. I can’t remember if they were first owner or not.

And so up the stairs we went to the “Lion” room, where his trophy heads are exhibited. Thank God nobody went PC and hid “those horrid things.” If you read Preservation, a recent issue took a stance for half the article excoriating big game hunting and hunters. By the way, TR help found the Boone and Crockett Club. He was a far thinking liberal but few liberals would today vote for him but I need to get on to other things. His favorite Winchester is on display in the lower exhibit hall.

On one floor on the reconstructed room side of the house, I can’t remember which, you can look out a back window and see the “gym” his father had built for him. It is pretty modest to be called a gym. It’s more like an enclosed corridor…enclosed with cyclone fence material but I guess he could run up and down and thrown things around whether it rained or not. It was roofed. In the “pretty” side of the house they had just collected a new artifact. TR never played with this medicine ball but had played with one like it. Neither I nor any of the rest had seen one but I knew what it was the minute I saw it. The ball weighed the better part of 20 lbs. as it was filled with sand, not air. And you throw this to or at someone; they caught it and threw it back. The last time I tried to catch a basket ball, I very nearly broke a fingers. This thing could break a rib. Certainly knock the breath out of you. There were bed rooms, a dining room, and a parlor. The wallpaper in each room was done by a different contractor (no Scalamandra.) I can’t remember how they matched the paper. The ranger thought that some of the mantle pieces were original and almost all the furniture…and they were beautiful pieces.

When David and I came by the house on the weekend and it was closed, I had a time figuring the lay of the land. There is a photograph that you can find in either a collection about TR or about Lincoln. After Lincoln was shot, his casket went to various cities and there were a number of funeral marches. One went up through the city and what you see are two children looking out a second story window from across an intersection. The kids are a long way off and hard to see. In the foreground is the cortège with the coffin riding on a probably a gun carriage. The caption is that there are two presidents in the picture. Lincoln in the foreground and TR as the nearer of the two children. That was a family call. You can see that they are children but I don’t think you can tell much more as to identity. A jeweler’s loop and knowledge of subject probably helps. But that house was on the corner and the birthplace is in the middle of the block! David and I talked it over and I couldn’t figure it out. The angles were off. The kids would be even father away from the camera. In the exhibit room they have both a reproduction of the photo and the explanation. The corner house was not the birthplace but Uncle Cornelius Schaack Roosevelt’s house and I think it was on Union Square. Anyhow that’s cleared up and now we can wonder on other things like how many antique shops you’d have to noodle before you found another medicine ball.

The ranger knew my sordid past and would often turn to one of us and ties us into the talk. When he ended the tour, I automatically looked at my watch and using Bishop House Rules reminded that he ran eight minutes over time. He had a good sense of humor. I want to add that I did return to my label reading but finally my legs, my back, and India called and I left for uptown.
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