Shutdown Would Shut Out Visitors to TR's Sagamore Hill

Syosset's Igor Glukhman came to Sagamore Hill Friday, bringing along two visiting friends from Jerusalem. Glukhman wanted to show his guests the home of President Theodore Roosevelt before a government shutdown made that impossible.

The shutdown would close Roosevelt's Long Island home and nearly 400 National Parks facilities across the country.

"This is the first place I bring people to, here," said Glukhman, a Russian immigrant now settled on Long Island. "We walk the grounds. We can relax. It is a beautiful place."

Theodore Roosevelt thought so, too. The 26th U.S. president dearly loved his 80-acre Cove Neck property on Long Island's North Shore. draws up to 100,000 visitors a year: history buffs, school children and ordinary visitors like Glukhman and his friends. A government shutdown would shut them out beginning Saturday.

"It's all politics," Glukhman said. "It's nothing to do with money."

All year round, visitors stroll the hilltop grounds and tour the 23-room, Queen Anne-style mansion that served as the Summer White House a century ago. If the federal government shuts down at midnight, Roosevelt's home would be closed Saturday, along with the other 393 national parks and related facilities, said Barbara Baxter, a spokeswoman for the National Parks Service.

The irony would not have been lost on Roosevelt himself, who championed the National Parks system to preserve vast, untamed stretches of the American landscape for public use.

The vast majority of the 20,000 NPS employees would be furloughed as a result, Baxter said. That would include the 14 full-time employees that protect the Roosevelt landmark: park rangers and experts who guide visitors and historians through the president's home, papers and artifacts.

"We continue to be hopeful this can be avoided," said Tom Ross, Sagamore Hill's Superintendent.

The federal property will be protected, however. Ross said  a security detail will remain behind to ensure the buildings are maintained and the grounds secured. Local law enforcement officials have also been alerted to the possible closure, Ross said.

Glen Cove's Mary Normandia likes to walk the grounds and admire its various avian inhabitants. Like Roosevelt, she is a naturalist, a member of two Long Island Audubon societies.

"You have to worry that the maintenance of the grounds, particularly out west, will be compromised," Normandia said.

The National Parks Service offers tours of the Roosevelt mansion five days per week, Wednesdays through Sundays, hourly from 10. a.m. to 4 p.m.

Roosevelt served as president from September, 1901 until March, 1909, when the mansion served as the Summer White House, entertaining foreign dignitaries as well as rowdy youngsters. Roosevelt and his second wife, Edith, raised six children in the home; the kids hiked, picnicked and rode horses on the grounds with their colorful dad.

Roosevelt died there in 1919 at age 60.