Doors open at Hill house

OYSTER BAY, N.Y. — The massive elk, moose and buffalo heads are back up. The lion-, tiger- and bearskin rugs are back down and the Lincoln, Jefferson and Grant portraits have been cleaned.

Sagamore Hill, the Long Island mansion that was Theodore Roosevelt’s home and summer White House, is set to reopen following an extensive four-year, $10-million renovation by the National Park Service, a fitting custodian for the man who championed historic preservation.

Every one of the 12,000 items owned by the 26th president, including an estimated 10,000 books and dozens of trophies from his hunting expeditions, were removed from the 28-room, Queen Anne Shingle style mansion and then painstakingly repaired and replaced exactly where he left them.

“We hope that if he walked through the front door right now, he would think he was back during the presidential years,” said Susan Sarna, curator at Sagamore Hill for the past 25 years and project manager for the renovation.

National Park Service officials received funding for the project in 2008, and after three years of planning — and packing — actual construction began in 2011.

In addition to other improvements, the roof was replaced, foundation repaired and the entire house’s electric system rewired.

The three-storey home built in 1885 and named by Roosevelt after the Indian chief Sagamore Mohannis has 15 bedrooms and three bathrooms, as well as sitting rooms, offices and a large porch.

It sits on 83 acres (33.5 hectares) high atop a hill overlooking an inlet that leads to Long Island Sound, about 56 kilometres east of Manhattan.

“This is the only home he actuallyowned.ItwasthesummerWhite House; he was the first president to actually work during the summer because of the invention of the telephone,” Sarna said.

The official reopening is scheduled for July 12. Daily tours will begin the following day; reservations are currently being taken.

This three-storey, 28-room Long Island mansion, known as Sagamore Hill, was named by Theodore Roosevelt after the Indian chief Sagamore Mohannis. It was the only home Roosevelt owned.

PHOTOS: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILES Personal mementos from Theodore Roosevelt’s life fill the library at Sagamore Hill. The mansion is set to reopen following a four-year, $10-million renovation by the National Park Service.

An African buffalo head hangs over the mantle and a dinner gong decorated with Kenyan elephant tusks sit in the home’s entrance hallway.

Susan Sarna has been the curator of Sagamore Hill for 25 years and was project manager of its renovation.

In the trophy room at Sagamore Hill, Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Rider hat hangs on the horns of an elk head shot by Roosevelt.

A period telephone and a photograph of his wife Edith sit on Theodore Roosevelt’s desk in the house library.