HALLS OF HISTORY

Presidents' Homes Reflect Periods, Personalities

AS Dwight Eisenhower begins his last year in the White House, he admits to a sustaining vision of life at another home: his 192-acre Gettysburg farm, with its promise of relaxed living, carefree hours padding about the yards and fields, and overseeing his herd of black Aberdeen Angus cattle.

"You'll be a full-fledged farmer when you get through with your job down in Washington," a guest once remarked. "Brother," beamed the President, "I hope, I hope." Such a hope has buoyed many a President since March 9, 1797, when George Washington at last made his way homeward through cheering throngs to Mount Vernon. But as Washington was the first to discover, obscurity is impossible for an ex-President. Though Washington settled back easily into his planter's life, visitors thought nothing of inviting themselves to dinner, and Mount Vernon's twelve bedrooms were rarely empty. Not even death removed the aura of Washington's august presence. Today, 160 years after he died, his Mount Vernon draws more than 1,000,000 visitors a year.

As the shadows have lengthened over the early history of the Republic, the homes and birthplaces of not only the great, but the near great and even the pedestrian Presidents have taken on the quality of national shrines (see color). The realization that such buildings, no matter how modest, are a living part of the national heritage has often come too late. Of the 89 structures known as having important associations with the 33 Presidents, 19 have disappeared, 46 are still in private ownership, and 39 are open to the public.

Ostentation & Austerity. Of those that survive, none set a higher tone than the great plantation houses of the Virginians. Perhaps the least known is James Madison's stately Montpelier, which is now a racehorse breeding farm owned by Marion duPont Scott (former wife of Actor Randolph Scott). In Montpelier's heyday there was no more festive scene than the dinner parties for 90, presided over by vivacious Dolly Madison, "a fine, portly, buxsom dame." Virginians not only maintained standards; they set them as well, as Frontiersman Andrew Jackson's Hermitage (opposite) proves. "Old Hickory" and his devoted, pipe-smoking Rachel cheerfully put up with log cabins for 15 years before they realized their dream of a grand white-colonnaded house of their own. Jackson built the Hermitage in 1819, four years after the Battle of New Orleans. Rachel tragically died 2 1/2 months before he entered the Presidency. During his final years in the Hermitage, Jackson kept in his bedroom the pistol with which he had killed Charles Dickinson defending Rachel's honor (as well as the bullet in his own chest received in the same duel).

Frugal New Englanders, from the Adamses to Calvin Coolidge, were strong naysayers to ostentation. The grey clapboard Old House in Quincy, where John Adams spent his declining years in voracious reading, has its equal, and superior, in many a New England village. But few historical sites in the U.S. have cradled so many greats. There the sixth President ("Old Man Eloquent"), John Quincy Adams, grew up; Diplomat Charles Francis Adams built the adjacent fireproof stone library to house the Adams family's 8,450 volumes; and the fourth-generation Historians Brooks and Henry Adams did much of their writing.

Lincoln's Springfield home, a Greek Revival house with a coat of Quaker brown, was worth a mere $3,000 when he left it for the White House. James ("Old Buck") Buchanan's 17-room Wheatland was styled for luxurious living. Bachelor Buchanan had acquired nearly $200,000 by the time he left the White House, and with it a taste for luxury, including plumbing. To service the four upstairs bedrooms he installed a sumptuous bathroom, modeled on the installation President Fillmore had introduced into the White House.

Elegant or Humble. The Virginians, and even the Adamses, had imported much of their furniture from England and France; Ulysses S. Grant relied on American craftsmen for everything from dry sink to horsehair sofa. The 230,000 visitors who now visit the recently renovated Grant house have no trouble spotting many a familiar attic piece. Even Grant found the Galena house too tame after the White House and his world tour, spent $95,000 for a Manhattan town house before his investments went sour, and he was left a poor man.

Post-presidential readjustment brought many ex-Presidents to a state near to insolvency, but it never troubled Teddy Roosevelt, who from the outset was assured of at least $10,000 annual inherited income. This left T.R. free to turn his vitality into everything he did, from bagging elephants to writing. Such a man is reflected in his surroundings, and there is no more vigorously masculine house in the U.S. than his Sagamore Hill.

As the U.S. gained depth in history, it developed a better appreciation of the historical value of such places as its Presidents' homes. Franklin D. Roosevelt's Hyde Park, which now draws more than 240,000 visitors annually, was designated a National Historic Site in 1944 while F.D.R. was still in the White House. Now the National Park Service is considering a systematic survey to ensure that at least one residence for each President will be preserved. The new President who will be elected in 1960--however elegant or humble his home may be --can expect it to be lasting.

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