Our visit started out with a trip to the visitor's center where there was a gift shop, museum displays, and a movie theater where we watched an introductory film. Teh museum displays held few objects; they consisted mostly of curving, wall-like displays with pictures and texts that you could walk around and read. This reminded me of the displays at Valley Forge, minus the objects. The introductory film was very well-done. It showed a human side to Roosevlet and his wife, Eleanor. The Roosevelt's granschildren spoke of their memories of the house, and the lives of their grandparents. They spoke of FDR's courageous attitudes when faced with paralysis, and about Eleanor's humanitarian work. They also touched on numerous events in history like the great depression.
After the movie had ended we met our tour guide in the visitor's center. She explained the lay of the land around Hyde Park to us and told us where we were going to go on our tour. She encouraged all of us to visit ValKill, the home of Eleanor Roosevelt. The first place she took us was the flower garden where she told us a few annecdotes about the Roosevelts, and encouaged us all to visit his grave on our own time. After the tour, I did, and here are some photos of the garden and graves.
Two of their dogs are buried under the sundial. That's how I want to be interred: in a garden with my pets.
Pretty flowers.
We weren't allowed to take photos inside of the house. I don't know why some historic sites are afraid that the flash will hurt the objects and some aren't. We have much older stuff at Grey Towers and we let people -photograph it.
FDR's House.
Overall I was not terribly impressed with the tour. I guess I could have asked more questions so that the tour guide would have given us more information. Overall she liked to tell a lot of stories (which I thoroughly enjoyed) but she was not really concerned with teaching her audience a whole lot about the Roosevelts. There were numerous ways to learn about FDR and his family at the site, so I still came away feeling like I learned a lot, just not from my tour guide.
You exited the house via the fire escape. It was a good way to keep the traffic flowing through the house, but once you got outside people just sort of trickled wherever they decided to go. There was no conlcusion to the tour. I was left thinking what's next?
We then went to look at the FDR Presidential library. At first I didn't realize that this was a museum, and I was wondering if I was going to get to look at his books and papers. I didn't. Instead there were rooms upon rooms of museum displays on FDR. I thought this was the most educational part of the whole trip.
There were many aspects of Hyde Park that both impressed and disapointed me. The brand-new visitor's center, as well as many extremely well-done and informative displays in the Presidential Library were eye opening and made the whole trip worthwhile. I learned more through those two things than I did through getting a tour of the house. Overall I was very moved by my trip to Hyde Park. It made me want to read up on the Roosevelts. Our tour guide reminded us that they call the men and women who participated in WWII the "greatest generation," and that FDR was the person who inspired that generation. I guess that is what made being there so impressive.
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