From asthmatic upper-class child to Harvard graduate, he lost his wife and his mother within hours of each other, the grief causing him to find himself in the west as a cowboy. In a saloon in the Dakotas, he ordered a coffee. Another of the patrons called him four-eyes, whereupon Teddy proceeded to deliver a merciless beating to him.
Returning to New York, he ran for and won a seat in the New York state assembly, where he became the leader of the reform faction of his party.
Later specifically choosing to become Assistant Secretary of the Navy, in the absence of his boss, John Davis Long, Teddy essentially ordered, among other things, the US fleet to attack the Spanish in the Philippines. After the loss of USS Maine outside Havana and the declaration of war against Spain, Teddy immediately resigned his post to help form a highly diverse regiment, the 1st United States Volunteer Cavalry, known as the Rough Riders.
Serving as Lieutenant Colonel and later Colonel, Teddy led his company and later the regiment itself in three major engagements in Cuba, including the most famous charge up Kettle and San Juan hills. In large part due to his efforts in starting the war, the United States acquired Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines, and independence for Cuba from Spain.
Now a war hero, Roosevelt was promoted by his party to William McKinley's Vice President, to keep him out of New York politics. After McKinley's assassination, became one of the most important, influential and best-loved presidents in the history of the US.
I wouldn't be writing this now if not for the tremendous efforts of the people at the National Parks Service (of which Teddy forced the creation due to his large number of parks he designated and his signing and use of the Antiquities Act. The national parks had no system of management until the Organic Act of 1916, which created the National Parks Service.) and the Friends of Sagamore Hill. They have maintained and supported Teddy Roosevelt's home as a national historic site, and if it weren't for them and people like them, I probably never would have visited it on a school trip.
Teddy Roosevelt's home, Sagamore Hill in Oyster Bay, New York, impressed me as a child. Before I enlisted in the US Army, I went there to see one of the recruiters from my town's office, Sergeant Dash, promoted to Sergeant First Class. The place has always had an enormous feeling of 'home' to me, and it's definitely my all-time favorite example of architecture. So much so, that I decided to use the copy of Sims 3 I purchased for my wife to design as faithful a representation of the building as I possibly could within the game.
The following are a collection of screen grabs from inside the game engine, showing outside elevations, specific details about the interior, and the layouts of all the floors.
Hopefully, it will be able to inspire someone else to learn about Teddy, as the site itself did for me.
Special thanks go to Robert L. Beres without whose three part tour on Youtube, the interiors would not have been possible.
Find the screenshot stream on Flickr at /Jansenart.
UPDATE: To download Simgamore Hill, go to this link. (You must first have Sims 3 installed, with the Pets, World Adventures, Late Night and Ambitions expansions.)
