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Top Cottage

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FDR and Dutchess County Stone Buildings

Hyde Park was also the site of two more Roosevelt-related buildings, personal projects for the President. In 1939 FDR teamed up with Henry Toombs to create a completely accessible retreat home for the wheelchair-bound president. FDR drew the sketch for "Top Cottage," and for fun, Henry Toombs told Life Magazine to include at the bottom of the plans "F.D. Roosevelt, Architect and Henry J. Toombs, Associate." In essence, "Top Cottage" was as much Franklin Roosevelt's design as it was Henry Toombs, but at least one architect took offense to the blurred boundaries. Frank Lloyd Wright's son John Lloyd Wright wrote to Life Magazine: "after seeing the title Architect after FD Roosevelt in your magazine, I give up. Put me in a concentration camp. The moral breakdown of the integrity and dignity of the architectural profession seems now complete." Toombs wanted to respond by stating it was a joke and it was his idea, not President Roosevelt's, but FDR suggested a Post Script instead: "By the way, did Thomas Jefferson have a license when he drew the sketches for Monticello, the University of Virginia and a number of other rather satisfactory architectural productions?"

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FDR Library Logo Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum
4079 Albany Post Road
Hyde Park, New York
1-800-FDR-VISIT
roosevelt.library@nara.gov


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