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Eleanor Roosevelt
National Historic Site

4097 Albany Post Road
Hyde Park, NY 12538

Tel: 845-229-9116
Fax: 845-229-0739

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What Happened Here?

In 1924, Franklin Delano Roosevelt built a retreat for his wife on property he owned in Hyde Park, New York. This small stone cottage, shared with political mentors and close friends, Nancy Cook and Marion Dickerman, became a place where Eleanor Roosevelt could pursue her political interests and social causes and meet with people who shared similar ideals. After FDR’s death it became her permanent home.

Mrs. Roosevelt brought delegates from the United Nations to Val-Kill to discuss the proposed Universal Declaration of Human Rights. World leaders visited here, including Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, Prime Minister Nehru of India, the Russian Premier Nikita Khruschev, and Marshall Tito of Yugoslavia. Labor leaders and renowned political leaders also visited Val-Kill. Mrs. Roosevelt spoke with presidential candidate John Kennedy at Val-Kill, urging him to support civil rights legislation.

And at Val-Kill Mrs. Roosevelt hosted the organizing meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women. Discussions with student activists, summer youth programs for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and summer picnics for the Wiltwyck School for Boys, an integrated institution for troubled inner city children, all were held here.

Val-Kill served as a forum; a place to bring together people from various backgrounds to share ideas, to talk about differences and similarities, and to discuss ways in which conditions of poverty, racism, war, oppression, economic and social injustice could be improved around the world. As Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Where, after all, do Universal Human Rights begin, but in small places close to home; so small that you cannot see them on maps of the world.”