A History of Val-Kill Cottage

The first wing of the Val-Kill Factory building that would later become Val-Kill Cottage. NPS Photo.

The fieldstone one and a half story cottage was the first building constructed at Val-Kill. Construction of a factory building followed shortly after to house the furniture shop for Val-Kill Industries, a joint business venture of Eleanor Roosevelt and her friends Marion Dickerman and Nancy Cook. The women built an additional shop building directly adjacent to the first structure in the late 1920s, and joined the two shortly after to create a large, irregularly shaped building with several wings. In 1936, Val-Kill Industries closed and Eric Gugler, the architect FDR previously hired to redsign the West Wing and Oval Office, converted the factory into an independent residence for use by Eleanor Roosevelt and her secretary Malvina "Tommy" Thompson. This is the building known today as Val-Kill Cottage.

Eleanor Roosevelt's friend, activist and author Joseph Lash, described the cottage as "a warm, rambling retreat, where she and Tommy could work and which she was constantly seeking to improve...

The house had what seemed lika an enormous number of guest rooms, stuck in all sorts of out-of-the-way places, of all sizes and shapes, each with tis surprises in the way of books and pictures (which Mrs. R. was always changing). And the guest rooms were always full.

From early spring to late fall, whenever President Roosevelt was not at the Big House, Eleanor spent as much time at Val-Kill as she could. Tommy's wing was semi-independent, with its own kitchen, guest room, porch, and living room, where guests always assembled for drinks before dinner. After dinner, the party gathered in Eleanor's living room, around the fireplace, where Eleanor would knit while engaging in lively discussions over politics. Piles of mail (as many as 130,000 letters per year) and manuscripts on her desk were evidence that her work never ceased.

Eleanor frequently made Val-Kill available to friends and family, and in later years, the rooms were filled with rambunctious grandchildren running in and out of doors. The many rooms at Val-Kill and photographs that cover the walls remind us that Eleanor Roosevelt had a compelling emotional need to have people who were close, as Lash recalled, people, "who in a sense were hers and upon whom she could lavish help, attention, tenderness. Without such friends, she feared she would dry up and die."