The names conjure up the vast corridor of the Hudson River, America's Rhine, once lined with the prideful chateaus of our capitalist aristocracy. Two empty houses, perched on the high bluff dropping to the waterway, have tales to tell and provoke questions about how and why we build. History permeates the first house, Springwood, Franklin Roosevelt's beloved home at Hyde Park. Filled with personal memorabilia, furnishings, and fabrics, the rambling house is redolent with the odors and textures. No wonder Eleanor treasured her Val-Kil cottage.
Events come back to life through the physical artifacts.
Just down the road, the Frederick Vanderbilt mansion sits like a grand white cenotaph in a landscaped cemetary. Designed by McKim Mead and White, in a magnificent Olmstead park, this proud palace embodied a moment of supreme confidence for a family and its position in our economy and culture. The house we see at Hyde Park began as a simple frame farmhouse that grew in the traditional American manner. What seems grand is actually, at its heart, the American home. The Vanderbilt place, by contrast, has contemporary coussins in today's Hamptons or Aspen.