Tourism In Hyde Park
The town of Hyde Park is home to several historic landmarks that are now owned by the National Parks Service and have been popular tourist attractions for nearly 80 years.
The Vanderbilt Mansion opened to the public in 1930 and the Roosevelt Home followed in 1946 and both have seen steady tourism ever since. Both offer entrance passes for $10.
The Roosevelt tour consists of about fifteen rooms on two floors of the house. Occasionally, specific rooms or floors may be unavailable or unfurnished for preservation work. Both Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt are buried beside each other on the property.
The Franklin D. Roosevelt Library is the first of the presidential libraries and was built from 1939 to 1940 to house the vast quantity of historical papers, books, and memorabilia the President had accumulated during a lifetime of public service and private collecting.
The Vanderbilt tour consists of “eighteen rooms on three floors of the mansion. Occasionally, specific rooms or floors may be unavailable or unfurnished for preservation work.”
According to Melanie Rottenkamp from Dutchess Tourism Inc, “ Every year Hyde Park is one of our strongest attractions with tourists with the Roosevelt Home and Library, the Vanderbilt Mansion, Mills Mansion, and the Culinary Institute Of America.”
“We don’t have an actual count on the national park numbers but 2022 was a record visitor spend in the county. In 2021 we almost recovered from the pandemic; 96% of where we were beforehand and this past year we blew it out the water having $706 million spent by tourists.
Now as we all know COVID-19 took a toll on many places and their ability to accept tourists, “this hurt Hyde Park because the main attractions are owned by the National Park Services and are a Federal Government Agency and they took much longer to open up as opposed to other attractions. COVID also hurt the Culinary, they weren’t open to visitors because the students’ health came first, and not only that the brewery closed down.”
“We need those visitors to keep these places open, however if you owned a farm, winery, outdoor stage, trails, or drive in movie theaters you had an amazing year during COVID because they could be open and people were doing anything to get outside.”
Without a doubt the history in Hyde Park will always be an appealing trip to many around the country. Rottenkamp said “presidential libraries are incredible, people will travel just for the information and stories at the FDR library. Many of the stories and information are relevant to this day, this is the only library to ever be used by a sitting president and having him be the only one elected to four terms and get us through the great depression, civil rights, and World War II makes this even more of a spectacular location.”
These attractions give us the opportunity to learn and see where the Roosevelts would have lived, and experience the history that’s there, and also the ability to experience what the life of the rich and famous would be like by going to the Vanderbilt Mansion.
Hyde Park is special, having such a large amount of history in such a small town is interesting for many people across the country, hence why they along with Dutchess County as a whole had a record year in tourism last year. If you have not been to these exhibits yet it’s definitely something many of us should take the time to experience and learn some of our own history.
