No house better reflects the personality and interests of its owner than Theodore Roosevelt's cherished Sagamore Hill. After Roosevelt returned to Oyster Bay following the death of both his beloved wife and mother, he and his second wife, Edith, made the house a home for their growing and rambunctious family. What began as the perfect getaway from unhealthy New York City summers in his grandfather's day became the Summer White House during Roosevelt's presidency. He hosted political guests like Henry Cabot Lodge and cultural luminaries like novelist Edith Wharton. Roosevelt spent his final years happily at Sagamore Hill, and after his death in 1919, the Theodore Roosevelt Association and the National Park Service preserved the house. With previously unpublished photographs and a detailed guide to the house and grounds, historian Bill Bleyer recounts bygone days at Roosevelt's haven.
Bill Bleyer was a prize-winning staff writer for Newsday, the Long Island daily newspaper, for thirty-three years before retiring in 2014. He is co-author of Long Island and the Civil War, published in 2015 by The History Press, and has been published in Civil War News, Naval History, Sea History, Lighthouse Digest, the New York Times, Chicago Sun-Times, the Toronto Star and others. Bleyer graduated from Hofstra University and earned a master's in urban studies at Queens College of CUNY.