By George! There’s More to Presidents Day Than Shopping!

Neither Macy, Lord, Taylor, or Saks were presidents of the United States but we do tend to pay them homage on Presidents Day more than the historic figures who once graced Manhattan.

George Washington bade his officers farewell at a retirement party held in the long room of the second floor of Fraunces Tavern (Pearl Street & Broad Street) in 1783. An active pub with a museum upstairs, it’s said that his officers, so emotionally moved by their leader’s stepping down, escorted him out of the pub and paraded to the river with him where he set sail for Mount Vernon.

Also downtown but on the east side of the island at Astor Place, in 1860 Abe Lincoln delivered a historic speech at Cooper Union that served to introduce the Springfield, Illinois presidential candidate to the East Coast. It was the speech that made him a true contender for the presidency.

Moving uptown, Teddy Roosevelt was born in a townhouse at 28 East 20th Street that has been reconstructed into a fine museum and period piece. Perhaps it’s my imagination running on overdrive from having viewed the movie “Arsenic and Old Lace” one too many times, but it’s easy to picture Teddy charging the stairs in the house, bellowing “Bully!” while on his way to read a bedtime story to his beloved daughter Alice.

When they married, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt were ensconced in a townhouse at 49 East 65th Street adjoining the brownstone of Franklin’s mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt. Until she came into her own Eleanor was grateful for the proximity of her mother-in-law as she herself became a mother, but when the honeymoon was over it was truly over between the two willful women.

But have you ever seen Val-Kill? What a place Eleanor had to escape to up the Hudson River. A short drive away from FDR’s mansion in Hyde Park, Val-Kill is a cottage where she sometimes retreated and which became her permanent residence after the president’s death in 1945. Summer and fall are the best seasons to visit the Hyde Park and Val-Kill compound. Standing in Eleanor’s intimate cottage it’s impossible not to be awed that in this simple space she entertained Gandhi.

But, back to the city for more recent history. In 1992, on his way to accept the nomination of the Democratic Party at the convention being held at Madison Square Garden, Bill and Hillary Clinton were broadcast live on their stroll to the Garden walking through Macy’s basement where sales and clearance signs were telltale symbols of Carville’s battle cry, “It’s the economy, stupid!” Today former President Clinton holds office in Harlem on West 125th Street by Malcolm X Boulevard.