Landscape Information
Known as Val-Kill (from the Dutch phrase for “valley stream”), this 181-acre site is situated approximately two miles east of the Roosevelt family’s Springwood estate and served as Eleanor Roosevelt’s country retreat. At Val-Kill Roosevelt chaired the committee that drafted the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, established a cottage industry that offered employment to local agrarian workers, wrote books and newspaper columns, and hosted diverse groups, including family, friends, world leaders, and school children.
The property was purchased by Franklin Roosevelt in 1911 and in the 1920s Eleanor Roosevelt and two friends, Nancy Cook and Marion Dickerman, established a retreat on the eastern shore of the property’s south-flowing creek, the Fall Kill. The modest compound is accessed by an east-west oriented drive, which bisects two large fields and is bordered to the north by a dry-laid stone wall and a spruce row. The drive follows undulating topography, becoming curvilinear as it progresses east, unveiling a fieldstone cottage set atop a graded lawn on the edge of a pond. A wooden bridge spans the Fall Kill at the southern edge of the pond, shielding a dam from view. East of the creek, the drive curves past a row of mixed conifers that partially screens a flat terrace and concrete pool, southeast of the cottage. The drive terminates at Eleanor Roosevelt’s former residence, located northeast of the stone cottage.
A cutting garden lies to the northeast while a southeast lawn features a rose garden, asphalt tennis court, large fieldstone fireplace, and a small, one-story playhouse. The property includes extensive woodlands and several groves of trees established by Franklin Roosevelt. In 1977 the property was designated a National Historic Site, the only such site dedicated to a first lady; it is administered by the National Park Service alongside the Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site and the Vanderbilt Mansion National Historic Site. The site is located within the Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area.
