Valet's Room

FDR employed at least six valets throughout much his adult life. The work of the valet required a dedicated room. Domestic manuals published in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries describe the duties of servants and the arrangement of domestic spaces:

Finely planned modern houses have a room devoted to valet’s work. It is finished with conveniences for brushing and pressing clothes, as it is the valet’s business to keep his employer’s raiment above the suspicion of not having just arrived from the tailor. He is an expert at pressing. The fold of his own trousers, as well as that in his master’s, is always clearly defined—one mark of a well-groomed man. A speedy and accomplished packer, he can fold a coat as well as the tailor who made it. An array of boots and shoes of all styles and colors in vogue he must keep in shape over lasts molded after a model. . . . The valet carries away his employer’s laid off clothes at each change. They are not returned until they have been brushed and freshened—equal to the tailor’s latest efforts.

At the White House, McDuffie had “a bed-room suite, a desk, comfortable rugs and excellent drapery. A telephone is in the room for his use and he has the privilege of living with his wife.”

The valet’s room at Hyde Park is much more modest, a small workroom too narrow to serve also as a bedroom. But it is efficiently located at the door that divides the family rooms from the service wing. The location of the annunciator, directly across the hall from the valet’s room, would have facilitated quick response to FDR’s calls through the night.