National Affairs: HALLS OF HISTORY

Presidents' Homes Reflect Periods, Personalities

AS Dwight Eisenhower begins his last year in the White House, he admits to a sustaining vision of life at another home: his 192-acre Gettysburg farm, with its promise of relaxed living, carefree hours padding about the yards and fields, and overseeing his herd of black Aberdeen Angus cattle.

"You'll be a full-fledged farmer when you get through with your job down in Washington," a guest once remarked. "Brother," beamed the President, "I hope, I hope." Such a hope has buoyed many a President since March 9, 1797, when George Washington at last made his way homeward through cheering throngs to Mount Vernon. But as Washington was the first to discover, obscurity is impossible for an ex-President. Though Washington settled back easily into his planter's life, visitors thought nothing of inviting themselves to dinner, and Mount Vernon's twelve bedrooms were rarely empty. Not even death removed the aura of Washington's august presence. Today, 160 years after he died, his Mount Vernon draws more than 1,000,000 visitors a year.

As the shadows have lengthened over the early history of the Republic, the homes and birthplaces of not only the great, but the near great and even the pedestrian Presidents have taken on the quality of national shrines (see color). The realization that such buildings, no matter how modest, are a living part of the national heritage has often come too late. Of the 89 structures known as having important associations with the 33 Presidents, 19 have disappeared, 46 are still in private ownership, and 39 are open to the public.

Ostentation & Austerity. Of those that survive, none set a higher tone than the great plantation houses of the Virginians. Perhaps the least known is James Madison's stately Montpelier, which is now a racehorse breeding farm owned by Marion duPont Scott (former wife of Actor Randolph Scott). In Montpelier's heyday there was no more festive scene than the dinner parties for 90, presided over by vivacious Dolly Madison, "a fine, portly, buxsom dame." Virginians not only maintained standards; they set them as well, as Frontiersman Andrew Jackson's Hermitage (opposite) proves. "Old Hickory" and his devoted, pipe-smoking Rachel cheerfully put up with log cabins for 15 years before they realized their dream of a grand white-colonnaded house of their own. Jackson built the Hermitage in 1819, four years after the Battle of New Orleans. Rachel tragically died 2½ months before he entered the Presidency. During his final years in the Hermitage, Jackson kept in his bedroom the pistol with which he had killed Charles Dickinson defending Rachel's honor (as well as the bullet in his own chest received in the same duel).