The Little White House is a house museum. This house was the retreat of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United States, located in the historic neighborhood of Warm Springs, Georgia. Roosevelt first came to Warm Springs (formerly known as Bullochville) in 1924 for treatment for polio; he liked the neighborhood so much that he built a home in the neighboring town of Pine Mountain. The house was completed in 1932. Roosevelt kept the house after he became president – using it as a presidential residence. He died there on April 12, 1945, three months after beginning his fourth term as president. The house was opened to the public as a museum in 1948. The museum’s main attraction is the portrait that artist Elizabeth Shumatova was painting when Roosevelt died, now known as the Unfinished Portrait. It hangs next to the finished portrait, which Shumatova completed later from sketches and memory.
Residents of Georgia, especially Savannah, began vacationing in Bullochville in the late eighteenth century to escape yellow fever; they were also attracted by the number of warm springs in the vicinity. In the late nineteenth century, traveling to the warm springs was a coveted way to escape Atlanta. Traveling by rail to Durand, people would go to Bullochville. One place that benefited from this was the Meriwether Hotel. Once the automobile became popular in the early twentieth century, tourists began traveling to other places, which led to the decline of the inn.
In 1921, the 39-year-old Roosevelt was diagnosed with polio. The president’s pain was relieved by immersion in warm water, bathing, and exercise. He first traveled to Warm Springs in October 1924. He arrived at a resort in town that had a permanent 31 °C natural spring, but the main house was described as “dilapidated”. Roosevelt bought the resort and an adjacent 1,700-acre (6.9 km²) farm in 1927 (the resort became known as the Roosevelt Warm Springs Rehabilitation Institute). Five years later, in 1932, after his first presidential election victory, he ordered a six-room pine house built on the property. This house was his refuge throughout his presidency and became known as the Little White House. He made a total of 16 trips during his presidency, usually spending two to three weeks each, as the train trip from Washington, D.C. to Warm Springs took a day.
The Little White House was a six-room Colonial Revival-style structure made of pine. Three of the rooms were bedrooms: one for Roosevelt, one for his wife Eleanor, and one for his private secretary. The other rooms were the hallway, living room, and kitchen. Access to the Little White House was via a dirt road, which is now only partially preserved. A servants’ quarters was built in 1932, followed by a one-story frame cottage that served as a guest house in 1933, and finally Georgia Wilkins’ cottage in 1934. The Wilkins family were the original owners of the property. Roosevelt used the Little White House as a base to replace Georgia politicians who refused to follow his policies. This was especially evident in 1938 when Roosevelt tried to replace U.S. Senator Walter George with a Roosevelt supporter, but failed, even though they were both Democrats.
World War II affected Roosevelt’s time in the Little White House. The only year he did not go to the Little White House was 1942, as he was preoccupied with the beginning of U.S. involvement in the war. It is believed that he vacationed as much as he did from 1943-1945 in the Little White House because his real hobby, sailing the Atlantic, was too dangerous during the war, even if it was only on inland waterways such as the Chesapeake Bay or Potomac Rivers. One important change was that soldiers from Fort Benning were stationed at Little White House to patrol the forests surrounding the farm. Roosevelt’s last trip to the Little White House was on March 30, 1945. He felt he was not getting enough rest at his Hyde Park home. According to some Warm Springs observers, Roosevelt looked “awful.” Unlike his previous visits, he avoided going to the swimming pool, which he had used to soothe himself on previous trips. On April 12, 1945, he was posing for a portrait in the Little White House when he suffered a stroke. Roosevelt died two hours later from a cerebral hemorrhage.
Most of Roosevelt’s property was bequeathed to the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation, which gained control of all of the properties in 1948, except for Georgia Wilkins Cottage, where Wilkins lived until her death in 1959. Both John F. Kennedy in 1960 and Jimmy Carter in 1976 used the property for their presidential campaigns.