Sagamore Hill

Theodore Roosevelt knew Cove Neck from boyhood, because his father had made Oyster Bay the family's summer base when Theodore was 15. A National Park Service brochure says that in 1880, the year he married Alice Hathaway Lee, Roosevelt bought a bare hilltop farm on Cove Neck whose only building was a barn; the 1966 National Register form dates the purchase to 1883 and names the seller as Thomas Youngs of Oyster Bay. He paid $10,000 in cash and took a $20,000 mortgage, then kept 95 of the 155 acres and sold the rest to relatives.

The New York firm of Lamb and Rich drew the plans. In February 1884, before the building contract was signed, Roosevelt's wife died two days after the birth of their daughter, Alice, and his mother died the same day in the family's city house. Roosevelt went ahead so that his daughter would have a home. He hired John A. Wood and Son of Lawrence, Long Island, which agreed to build the house for $16,975. His sister Anna moved in with the baby in 1885 while Roosevelt divided his time between Long Island and his ranch in Dakota Territory. He had meant to call the place Leeholm, after his first wife, but after renewing his friendship with Edith Kermit Carow he named it for Sagamore Mohannis, a local chief who had signed away rights to the land. Theodore and Edith married in December 1886 and moved in the following spring. They raised six children there.

The house is a rambling Queen Anne building of wood frame and brick with 23 rooms. The first floor holds a center hall, the library that served as Roosevelt's office, the dining room, the drawing room and the kitchen. The large North Room, about 30 by 40 feet, was designed by Roosevelt's friend C. Grant LaFarge, son of the artist John LaFarge, and finished in mahogany, black walnut, swamp cypress and hazel. Park Service sources date it to 1905; the 1966 National Register form says 1904. The Gun Room on the top floor was the place where Roosevelt wrote.

During his presidency the house was the Summer White House, for the seven summers from 1902 to 1908 according to the park's website; a 2005 park brochure says 1902 to 1909. In August 1905 Roosevelt received the envoys of Russia and Japan separately in the library and then brought them together, opening the talks that ended the war in the Treaty of Portsmouth that September and earned him the Nobel Peace Prize. He died in his sleep at Sagamore Hill on January 6, 1919, at age 60. Edith Roosevelt lived on in the house until her death there in 1948, at 87. Their eldest son, Theodore Jr., built a Georgian house called Old Orchard on the estate in 1937.

After Edith's death the Theodore Roosevelt Association, a nonprofit founded in 1919, bought the house, its contents and 83 acres, and opened it as a museum in 1953. Public Law 87-547, approved on July 25, 1962, authorized the federal government to accept the property, and in 1963 the association gave Sagamore Hill, Roosevelt's birthplace in Manhattan and a $500,000 endowment to the nation.

Today the National Park Service manages 83 acres. The grounds are open daily from sunrise to 30 minutes after sunset at no charge. The house can be seen only on a guided tour of about 45 minutes, offered Thursday through Sunday and reserved in advance through Recreation.gov; the park lists adult tickets at $15. Old Orchard is now the site museum.