by Cynthia Young
Contributing Editor

Summary: Perched on a hill three miles north of the White House, a 19th-century cottage sits overlooking the capital city, where, for one thoughtful president in the 1860s, it captured the summer breezes and provided a place of refuge from Washington’s rough-and-tumble wartime crowds. The National Trust for Historic Preservation is funding a $15 million renovation of President Lincoln’s Cottage, a 2.3-acre site on the grounds of the Armed Forces Retirement Home in northwest Washington, D.C. With seven-years of planning and renovation nearly complete, President Lincoln’s Cottage at the Soldiers’ Home will open to the public on Presidents’ Day, February 18, 2008.

“Lincoln spent a total of a quarter of his presidency here,” says Richard Moe, Hon. AIA, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, during a tour of the Gothic Revival cottage and the adjacent Richard H. Smith Visitor and Education Center in October. “He probably wrote the Emancipation Proclamation here. This is where he certainly contemplated the big ideas and where he also thought about the Civil War.”

“This is the only site in Washington that will tell the story of the Lincoln presidency,” adds Moe, of the cottage with its pebble-dash stucco façade and gabled roof. “It is the only site that represents his presidency outside of the White House, and all told, this place is probably the most important site of Lincoln’s presidency.”

The Lincoln family resided here from June through November during the summers of 1862, 1863, and 1864, transporting 19 wagonloads of household furniture and goods up the Seventh Street turnpike to the cream-colored, 34-room cottage. Lincoln commuted daily on horseback to the White House and, along the way, talked with returning soldiers and nodded to poet Walt Whitman. In the cottage, he met with cabinet officials, delegations, and political adversaries. Here he paced the floor at night and grieved for his dead son and for the nation’s fallen soldiers. His refuge from the capital’s political pressures, heat, and clamor, its solace gave Lincoln the tranquility to shape his landmark Emancipation Proclamation, the 1863 presidential order abolishing slavery in the South.

This is the compelling story the cottage will tell.

Moving the 19th century onto the grounds
The National Trust will operate the cottage and visitor center under a long-term agreement with the Armed Forces Retirement Home. The National Trust is raising funds through public-private partnerships with the U.S. Congress, United Technologies Corp., Save America’s Treasures, and Robert H. Smith, among others. The Trust has more funds to raise, so is restoring the grounds in stages.

The Trust used 19th-century photographs to return the cottage to the Civil War era, including one from Lincoln’s family album. Construction crews are jackhammering up concrete sidewalks to install 19th-century walkways. “We want to get the 21st century off these grounds and move the 19th century onto the area,” says Frank Milligan, director of President Lincoln’s Cottage. “Our goal is to return these grounds to the place Lincoln enjoyed.”

The project team includes preservation architect and lead designer Hillier Architecture of Philadelphia; construction management by the Christman Company of Alexandria, Va.; and exterior restoration by general contractors J.S. Cornell & Son and Historic Structures of Washington, D.C.

The team researched the interior for mid-19th-century clues. “We did a lot of nondestructive investigation,” adds David Overholt, who is managing the construction. “It was like giving the building an MRI. We looked through the walls with thermal imaging and ground-penetrating radar.” They found evidence of gas lighting and pipes, then installed gas fixtures in their original locations. The team also added clay chimney pots way up on the chimney tops.

Conveying Lincoln’s philosophy
“We are capturing those stories,” Milligan says, as work crews stripped layers of paint off walls and sanded floors. “We’ve built the whole tour around them. The guided tour led by a well-trained educator is the essence of the visitor experience. The tour group will sit with their guide [on period furniture around Lincoln’s table] and listen to the story of British visitors who arrived here [late one night] unannounced, and yet Lincoln came down in his carpet slippers and agreed to meet with them. Later, in one visitor’s diary, he said Lincoln was clearly the most informed, educated head of state he had ever met. These are wonderful stories.”

In several rooms, visitors will hear historical voices and see projections of Lincoln’s friends, family, staff, contemporaries, and Whitman. This personal, novel experience will tell the story of Lincoln, his family life, and how he worked out the crucial decisions he made here. In the library, visitors can take copies of Lincoln’s books down off the shelves and see the passages he read aloud to his guests. Lincoln’s favorites included Shakespeare’s histories, especially Richard II and Henry IV, which mirrored his thoughts on equal opportunity for all in the face of tyranny.

“The library is essential to get to the core of Lincoln as writer and leader, and the ideas that represented that,” says Milligan, who holds a doctorate in American and Canadian history. “We are blessed to have an inventory of books he signed out from the Library of Congress and some inkling of his own personal library. Our purpose is to convey what they meant to Lincoln. That means what he read for pleasure and leisure, which often was poetry and Shakespeare. The library is the stage where we are presenting Lincoln’s thoughts.”

Pondering the Emancipation Proclamation
Off the library, a double archway leads to a sunny parlor where visitors will learn more about Lincoln. Upstairs, visitors will the see the family bedrooms. “We just weren’t interested in obtaining 19th-century beds,” Milligan notes. “We took this beautiful room as an example of the space where Lincoln would have begun to work at night and to think through his major ideas and policies.”

One of those policies was pondering when and how to abolish slavery while preserving the Union. “Lincoln felt that if he was going to be remembered for anything, it would be for this act, issuing the Emancipation Proclamation,” notes Erin Carlson Mast, curator of President Lincoln’s Cottage. Politicians, friends, and foes counseled Lincoln that issuing the controversial act and retaining the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery in the Republican Party’s 1864 presidential election platform could lose him re-election; but Lincoln would not be swayed. The 13th Amendment remained and he won the election by a landslide.

The cottage was built by Washington banker Charles W. Riggs in 1842 as a summer home. In 1851, Riggs sold the house and 256 rural acres to the federal government, which built a retirement home for 200 injured veterans of the U.S.-Mexican War (1846-1848). The cottage was expanded between 1851 and 1863, with a west wing and a kitchen dependency added. In 2000, President Clinton designated the cottage and grounds a national monument.

To Milligan, the purpose of the restoration—to bring Lincoln to life—is clear. “When people get into their cars to leave here, we don’t want them necessarily talking about the reproductions,” notes Milligan, “we want them to talk about the message of Lincoln.”