WASHINGTON, D.C. — For obvious reasons, the White House is largely out of bounds to the public. History buffs looking to follow in the footsteps of Abraham Lincoln, therefore, typically end up at two places when visiting our nation’s capital: Ford’s Theatre on 10th Street NW, where the president was fatally shot while attending a performance of “Our American Cousin” on April 14, 1865, and the Petersen House across the street, where he died in a back bedroom early the next morning.
Yet neither of those sites — nor the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Ill. — really captured the day-to-day life of the 16th president of the United States.
So it’s with great anticipation that President Lincoln’s Cottage at the Soldiers’ Home opens to the public Tuesday, the day after Presidents Day, as a National Trust historic site.
“Ford’s Theatre talks about his death, and Springfield talks about his pre-presidential years,” says Frank Milligan, director of the $16 million site in northwest Washington, D.C. “[Lincoln] spent a third of his presidency out here, so this was very much a family home.”
If you go
Getting there: President Lincoln’s Cottage at the Soldiers’ Home is located on the Armed Forces Retirement Home campus in Washington, D.C. The entrance to the campus is the Eagle Gate at Rock Creek Church Road N.W. and Upshur Street N.W., 20011. Parking is available. The site also is available by public transportation; for directions, visit www.lincolncottage.org.
Hours, admission: The cottage is open from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Mon.-Sat. and from noon to 3 p.m. Sun. (Nov. 1 through March 31) and from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mon.-Sat. and from noon to 4 p.m. Sun (April 1-Oct. 31). Tours, which are limited to 15 people, last about one hour. Tickets cost $12 for adults, $8 for National Trust members and $5 for children 6 to 12. Photo identification is required to enter because this is on a federal campus. Reservations are strongly recommended and can be made online or by phone at 1-800-514-3849.
The Robert H. Smith Visitor Education Center, located in a restored 1905 Beaux Arts building adjacent to the cottage, features related media presentations and rotating exhibits; the current “In Pursuit of Emancipation” includes a signed copy of the Emancipation Proclamation and the pen Lincoln used to sign it. Hours: daily from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. (Nov. 1-March 31) and 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. (April 1-Oct. 31).
Don’t feel bad if you’ve never heard about this pretty 2 1/2-story Gothic Revival residence, because save for a small group of academics and dedicated Lincoln nuts, nobody else has either. Used as administrative offices for much of the past century, it was only recently rediscovered as a place of historical significance.
And although it’s called a cottage, it’s anything but. Built in 1842 as a year-round home for George Washington Riggs, a prominent banker, it counts 34 rooms.
The federal government purchased the white stucco house and 256 acres from Riggs in 1851 with the idea of turning the property into a veterans’ retirement home. And, indeed, during Lincoln’s time, upward of 200 disabled veterans resided in two houses next to the cottage. But thinking it would be “good politics” to have a president stay here during the hot summer months, they offered it to President James Buchanan as a kind of 19th-century Camp David.
Washington during the 1850s, with most of its streets unpaved and many government buildings only half-built, was a pretty miserable place in the summer, plagued by sweltering temperatures and swampy, unsanitary water conditions. The cottage, on the third-highest spot in the capital and three miles from the heat and congestion of central Washington, was usually about 10 degrees cooler and offered pleasant breezes, along with a good water supply. (From his bedroom, Lincoln could see the Capitol dome under construction.)
Lincoln first visited the cottage at Buchanan’s suggestion three days after his inauguration on March 4, 1861. Yet with the start of the Civil War six weeks later, the family wouldn’t actually stay there until the summer of 1862. It was none too soon: his 11-year-old son, Willie, had died that February, most likely from typhoid fever caused by contaminated water from a nearby canal that fed the White House. Lincoln loved the cottage so much that he often stayed until the middle of November, by which time the staff started to get cold and ornery.
It was in this quiet setting that President Lincoln spent much of 1862 working through his emancipation plan and plotting wartime strategies, meeting with Union officers and political opponents. He and wife Mary also entertained there, sometimes on the large veranda overlooking the front yard, other times in the second-floor library, where Lincoln would stand with his back to the hearth and tell stories or jokes or read aloud from books.
“He was very well-read when it came to certain poets — for example, he could run lines from Alexander Pope’s ‘Essay on Man,’ ” says Mr. Milligan. “And he loved to read Shakespeare.”
Most historic house museums aim to transport visitors back in time by immersing visitors in the “stuff” of the period, namely furniture, photos and other personal items. But not the Lincoln Cottage. The goal here is to get people to come to know Lincoln as a person, and so there’s just a smattering of Civil War-era furnishing so as to not be distracting.
Or, as Mr. Milligan explains, “We didn’t want our visitors to get into the questioning mode of ‘Which seat did the president sit in?’ ”
Which is not to say the restoration, nearly eight years in the making, isn’t stunningly authentic: Most of the woodwork is original, along with the marble fireplaces, the paint colors (hidden beneath 23 layers of paint) and the jib doors in the main parlor that the 6-foot-4 Lincoln undoubtedly hit his head on when walking out onto the veranda. The trust also reproduced sconces from a picture found in the house and hired a firm to trace all the gas lines so they knew where to hang them.
To paint that intimate portrait, the museum draws on the many letters and diary entries written by, to and about Lincoln during his tenure. Some are read aloud by “historical voices” as images flash across a screen. For instance, visitors will hear the voice of Mary imploring her husband to stop making the three-mile commute between the White House and the cottage: “If you value your life, do I intrigue of you, discontinue your visits out of the city.”
Early on, notes Mr. Milligan, Lincoln made that daily trip alone on horseback or by carriage; the president enjoyed stopping ambulance transports to talk to veterans coming from the front, and visiting the contraband camps near the cottage — a refuge for escaped slaves — to join residents in prayer and song.
But while Lincoln seemed unconcerned, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and others feared for his safety. So by fall 1862, he had military escorts: the 150th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry Bucktail Regiment out of Meadville. Even so, a would-be assassin’s bullet still found its way through Lincoln’s stovetop hat one August night in 1864. (A Union guard found it with a bullet hole through the crown.)
In a way, the hourlong tour culminates in Lincoln’s bedroom on the second floor, where museum interpreters tackle the topic of emancipation. While Lincoln — an ambitious man with a strong moral compass — wasn’t particularly religious, he was spiritual, says Mr. Milligan. So he viewed the decision to free the slaves as a huge accomplishment. It was controversial, of course; a lot of Southern visitors and some Northerners took issue with the fact that the proclamation, as a military necessity, only freed the slaves within the “rebellious” states. And in 1864, Lincoln was besieged by his political handlers to back away from his commitment to the 13th Amendment to abolish slavery in order to win re-election.
To hammer that point home, the room holds only an exact copy of the desk on which he drafted that important document, and this quote above the fireplace: “If my name ever goes into history, it will be for this act, and my whole soul is in it.”
In creating what they hope is a dynamic tour, the museum is “challenging” people to think about Lincoln in his humanity.
“He shouldn’t be thought of as being on a pedestal, like the Lincoln Monument,” says Mr. Milligan. “He had certain limitations to his views, and they should be presented.”
Gretchen McKay can be reached at gmckay@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1419.
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The yard of Rick and Terry Stone, 1803 E. Howard St., has been named the June 2008 Yard of the Month by the Beautification Committee of the Pontiac Area Chamber of Commerce.
