Getaway spots
From Lincoln’s Cottage to Mar-a-Lago, commanders in chief have found places to escape
If you took all the presidential retreats in U.S. history and combined them into one sprawling structure, it probably would still be smaller than the 110,000-square-foot Mar-aLago in Palm Beach, Florida. And that’s including all 12 guest cabins at Camp David.
That rustic retreat in the Maryland mountains, has been spurned by President Donald Trump in favor of glitzy Mar-a-Lago, which has
served as both a getaway and a moneymaking business for the 45th president.
By this point in their presidencies, every one of Trump’s eight predecessors starting with Richard Nixon had spent time at Camp David, a 30-minute helicopter ride from the White House. It seemed as though Trump might visit last weekend; the Palm Beach Post had obtained Federal Aviation Administration documents for a flight restriction over Camp David’s air space because of “VIP movement.”
Instead, the president visited Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia.
Though millions of tourists flock to the White House every year, it’s often a place that presidents want to escape. Most have gone back to family homes in the summertime, particularly before the existence of central air conditioning. But a handful also have kept personal retreats, which vary widely in degrees of luxury from a rough log cabin down a dirt road to a 300-foot yacht to the glamorous Mar-a-Lago.
Here are some of them:
Lincoln’s Cottage
Before you criticize Trump for his frequent escapes from the White House, consider this: President Abraham Lincoln spent more than a quarter of his presidency at his retreat. But, perhaps because of the pressures of the Civil War, he didn’t go far; the Gothic revival-style cottage was 4 miles away in what is now Washington’s Petworth neighborhood.
The home had been built in 1842 by a wealthy banker and then bought by the federal government to use as a veterans-care facility. A dormitory housing about 200 disabled and elderly veterans was built next door. Lincoln’s predecessor, James Buchanan, visited the cottage first and probably recommended it to Lincoln.
Abe first went there a few days after his inauguration, and he kept returning; his last visit was the day before he was assassinated.
Built on a hilltop in a thenrural area, the breezy cottage offered a break from the heat and din of downtown Washington. In 1862, first lady Mary Todd Lincoln wrote to a friend, “We are truly delighted with this retreat, the drives & walks around here are delightful, & each day, brings its visitors.”
But the burdens of the war were never far away. From the veranda, Lincoln would have been able to see fresh graves being dug at the Soldiers’ Home National Cemetery. He wrote several drafts of the Emancipation Proclamation in the cottage’s study.
The cottage was used in the following few decades by Presidents Rutherford B. Hayes and Chester Arthur, although not nearly as much. It was restored in 2008 and is open to the public.
USS Mayflower
The official yacht of the commander in chief played an important role in one president’s courtship.
Seven months after Woodrow Wilson’s first wife died, he met Edith Bolling Galt, a widow 15 years his junior. He was immediately smitten, writes John Milton Cooper Jr. in “Woodrow Wilson: A Biography.”
The relationship idled for about a month. Enter the USS Mayflower, a Navy ship that had been recommissioned as a presidential yacht in 1905. Wilson invited Edith to join him on a cruise up the East Coast to New York.
They married a few months later, in December 1915. The Brown House at Rapidan Camp
Soon after taking office in 1929, President Herbert Hoover selected an area along the Rapidan River in Shenandoah National Park for a rustic retreat.
Marines built the camp, made up of 13 lodges and cabins, as part of a training exercise. (Hoover paid for the materials.) Hoover’s cabin was dubbed “the Brown House.”
As the Great Depression gripped the country, Hoover visited Rapidan frequently, often on doctor’s orders. The remote enclave, accessible only by a rough dirt road, attracted a who’s who of the day: aviator Charles Lindbergh, inventor Thomas Edison and British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald were among its visitors. The press was banned.
Little White House
Franklin D. Roosevelt first visited the therapeutic waters of Warm Springs, Georgia, while seeking treatment for polio in 1924. Soon after, he bought the resort and turned it into a foundation for other polio sufferers. In 1932, while governor of New York and the Democratic nominee for president, he built the six-room “Little White House” on the grounds.
Roosevelt didn’t get to visit much during World War II. After returning from the Yalta Conference in February 1945, he went to the Little White House one more time. While sitting for a portrait in the living room of the retreat on April 12, he suffered a massive stroke and died a short time later.
Camp David
The only official retreat of presidents, this former naval installment in Frederick County, Maryland, was developed by Roosevelt in 1942. He dubbed it “Shangri La.”
The rustic cabin was a favorite of President Dwight Eisenhower, who recovered there after suffering a heart attack in Denver in 1955. He renamed it Camp David after his father and his grandson. His successors have visited, and they’ve often been joined by foreign heads of state. Winston Churchill was the first, in 1943, describing it was “in principle a log cabin, with all modern improvements.”
Camp David is perhaps best known not for presidential relaxation but for the peace accords that President Jimmy Carter negotiated between Israel’s Menachem Begin and Egypt’s Anwar Sadat in 1978.
Trump, when asked just before taking office whether he planned to visit the wooded hideaway, told a German journalist: “Camp David is very rustic, it’s nice, you’d like it. You know how long you’d like it? For about 30 minutes.”
La Casa Pacifica
While running for president in 1968, Richard Nixon sent an aide to search the California coast for a presidential hideaway, according to the Los Angeles Times. The aide found a 9,000-square-foot Spanish-style mansion in San Clemente, California, that was for sale by a Democratic backer who had reportedly played poker there with FDR.
Nixon made the purchase soon after he won the White House. While president, he hosted Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and Japanese Prime Minister Eisaku Sato at his “Western White House.”The retreat became Nixon’s home after his resignation in 1974. He sold it in 1980.
Prairie Chapel Ranch
President George W. Bush bought the 1,600-acre ranch near Crawford, Texas, in 1999, while governor of the Lone Star State.
Although critics complained about his frequent trips to the “Western White House,” Bush built a 4,000-square-foot house well-suited for hosting dignitaries and holding meetings. That included summits with Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Bush and his wife, Laura, now live in Dallas and use the ranch as a weekend retreat.
Mar-a-Lago
Built in 1927 by cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post, Mar-a-Lago had been intended as a presidential retreat when it was bequeathed to the U.S. government in 1972.
“Back in the 1970s, when the federal government owned it, President Richard M. Nixon flew down to look into declaring it the ‘Winter White House,’” The Washington Post’s Mary Jordan reported in 1991. Nixon resigned before he could follow through; the next two presidents, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, showed no interest in visiting or developing the 128-room mansion.
Tired of the expense of maintaining it, the government returned the property to the Post Foundation in 1980. Post’s children were also uninterested in its upkeep. In 1985, they put the estate on the market for $20 million.
According to Trump, he offered to buy the property, including the velvet-andgold furnishings, for $28 million (on other occasions, he has said $25 million and $15 million) but was rebuffed. Incensed, he told the foundation that he had bought a small strip of land in front of Mar-a-Lago and threatened to build an eyesore that would block the view of the beach unless they sold the estate to him. In the end, he got it for a bargain: $5 million for the house and $3 million for the furniture.