Springwood

Springwood is the Roosevelt family’s stately three-story mansion at Hyde Park and the setting for an unexpected visit by the Washington varsity crew. On the Saturday evening before their Monday race, the rowers found the estate after a river excursion and a long walk through its grounds; inside, the president’s son welcomed them into a conversation about rowing and coaches. The mansion’s grandeur and its ordinary, inhabited rooms make the visit a meeting point between national prominence and the crew’s everyday sporting world.

Setting and Approach

The visit began when Al Ulbrickson let the varsity take the coaching launch out rather than spend the evening restless at the house. With a student manager piloting, the boys headed upriver, passed the Navy and Columbia shell houses, went northwest past Krum Elbow, and eventually reached Hyde Park Station. After asking directions, they returned to a cove, left the manager with the boat, crossed railroad tracks and a narrow trestle, and walked uphill through woods and estate grounds.

For roughly half an hour they followed bridle paths and overgrown roads, crossed broad lawns, and passed an abandoned gristmill and a stable before reaching greenhouses and a gardener’s cottage. An elderly couple there confirmed that the boys were already on the president’s estate and directed them toward the main house. The route made Springwood less a destination they entered by formal invitation than a place they discovered step by step, moving from riverbank to nursery paths and finally to the wide gravel drive.

Exterior and Interior

At the end of the drive stood Springwood, a large brick-and-masonry mansion with three stories and a semicircular portico held up by white Grecian columns. The boys had never seen a house so magnificent. Nervous, they nevertheless went onto the portico and knocked as night fell, nearly nine o’clock.

The rooms they encountered gave the estate a more intimate dimension. The young man who answered identified himself as Franklin Roosevelt Jr., invited the visitors in, and led them to the president’s library. Shelves of books rose from floor to ceiling; portraits of American presidents and members of the Roosevelt family covered the remaining wall space. An ornate fireplace dominated the room, and a fifteen-foot library table in front of it held newly issued books on an array of subjects. Other tables displayed fresh flowers or porcelain figures. The library’s abundance and order stood in sharp contrast to the crew’s uncertain, improvised arrival.

The Visit and Its Significance

The president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, was not at home. His son, whom the boys called Frank, instead became their host and a fellow enthusiast: he rowed in Harvard’s number six seat in the junior varsity boat and had just returned from New London, where Harvard’s varsity had beaten Yale but its junior varsity had lost. He also told the Washington rowers that Harvard coach Charlie Whiteside had been fired shortly before the race and that Tom Bolles was being discussed as a possible successor, especially if he won another freshman victory at Poughkeepsie.

The talk lasted an hour and ranged over rowing and coaching. George “Shorty” Hunt, relaxing in an upholstered chair by the fireplace, nearly jumped when Frank explained that it was his father’s favorite chair and that the president sometimes delivered his radio fireside chats from it. The detail brought the distant public figure into the room through a domestic object, even though he himself was absent. Back at the shell house, Johnny White recorded the visit in his diary in the matter-of-fact tone of a stop at a neighbor’s home, calling the place fine. Springwood thus remained both a conspicuously grand presidential residence and, for one evening, the setting of an informal exchange between young rowers.