Wilderstein: Daisy Suckley, FDR, and a Dog Named Fala

Wilderstein is a Queen Anne mansion on the Hudson River whose name, wild man's stone, comes from Native American petroglyphs that once stood nearby. Thomas Holy Suckley built the original Italianate villa here in eighteen fifty-two. His son Robert enlarged and transformed it into its current elaborate form in eighteen eighty-eight, hiring Poughkeepsie architect Arnout Cannon for the work. Cannon added a third floor, a five-story circular tower, and a verandah, and the original villa had been designed by John Warren Ritch of New York. Joseph Burr Tiffany, a cousin of Louis Comfort Tiffany, designed the ground-floor interiors, and Calvert Vaux laid out the grounds in the Romantic landscape style.

The last Suckley to live here was Margaret, known as Daisy, a distant cousin and intimate companion of Franklin Roosevelt who died at Wilderstein in nineteen ninety-one at the age of ninety-nine. In nineteen forty, Daisy gave Roosevelt a Scottish terrier puppy she had trained for six months. That dog became Fala, perhaps the most famous presidential pet in American history. After Daisy's death in nineteen ninety-one, a worn suitcase found at Wilderstein contained hundreds of letters between them, revealing a far deeper bond than either had let the world see. The correspondence transformed historians' understanding of Roosevelt's private life. Wilderstein is a historic site open for tours.

Daisy Suckley helped form Wilderstein Preservation, the private nonprofit that opened the house to the public at Christmas, nineteen eighty-four.