This is where a young nominee sought the critical endorsement of Eleanor Roosevelt. She thought him too wishy-washy on Civil Rights, and counseled him to be more assertive on the issue. JFK complied, she endorsed him, and he won by a hair. Without Eleanor, it also seems impossible to me that FDR could have overcome his crippling polio limitations and successfully campaigned for and won the Presidency. And of course, without Eleanor, it seems unlikely that the UN would have adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. After her husband’s death, she was in many ways the moral leader of the Democratic Party. She stared down the Soviets at the UN. She wrote over a dozen books. And she spoke frequently to labor, Civil Rights, and other important leaders, as well as to the public.

Her home here was also where many of the most important acts of FDR’s diplomacy took place, including playing in the pool with Churchill and famously eating hot dogs with the King of England. The house is viewable by tour (frequent in summer) and the grounds are also lovely. The site was once part of FDR’s family estate, so there’s a hiking path linking them, if you have time. The archive library & museum at the FDR site contain useful exhibits of Eleanor, so it’s wise to visit both sites together.