Hildene

Hildene was the summer home of Robert Todd Lincoln and his wife, Mary Harlan Lincoln, in Manchester, Vermont. Robert was the eldest of Abraham Lincoln's four sons and the only one to reach adulthood. He first visited the area at 20, in the summer of 1863, when he, his brother Tad and their mother stayed nearby to escape the heat of Washington.

The house was completed in 1905 in the Georgian Revival style, on a promontory about 300 feet above the Battenkill Valley. Its name comes from old English words for hill and valley with a stream. About half of the 412-acre estate lies on the valley floor, in meadows and wetlands.

A formal garden planted in 1907 is laid out like a cathedral's stained-glass window. Privet hedges draw the pattern and mixed beds of annual and perennial flowers fill it with color. The garden is known for its collection of over 1,000 herbaceous peonies.

The house is furnished almost entirely with Lincoln family furniture and holds objects that belonged to Robert Todd Lincoln and his parents. An Aeolian pipe organ was installed in 1908 and restored in 1980. On the grounds, the 1903 wooden Pullman palace car Sunbeam arrived in 2011, and the Rowland Agricultural Center opened in 2008 with a herd of Nubian goats and a cheese-making facility.

Descendants of the Lincoln family lived at Hildene until 1975. In 1978 a non-profit, the Friends of Hildene, bought the property and began restoring the house, outbuildings and gardens.