Hildene Estate
1005 Hildene Road
Manchester, Vermont 05254
802-362-1788
After my first trip to Hildene in 2013, I knew a return trip would have to be in the spring. I planned to schedule our trip during the blooming of their thousands of peonies. Well, with an extremely hot spell in June 2017, the flowers bloomed and died quickly, and I missed it by a week. The trip balanced out tho, because I learned that tourists could now take interior photos (which are below), and all the tourists had come and gone the previous week! So, although there are no flowers, please enjoy the inside of the house.
A few things; the house is open year-round, I post large size photos so you can see the details, and if there is a next visit, I'll take much better pictures of the floor diagrams. A Lincoln genealogy chart, and a lot of information about the estate are at the end of this post.
Robert Todd Lincoln's bedroom.
Permission to post granted by the president, when I called Hildene.
Diagram of 2nd floor.
A bit of information from Hildene's website: "Robert Lincoln built Hildene as a summer home at the turn of the 20th century. He was the only child of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln to survive to maturity. Robert first visited Manchester as a young man in the summer of 1864 when he came to the Equinox Hotel with his mother and his brother Tad. Some forty years later he returned to purchase 400 acres of land to build what he would call his ancestral home. At the time, Robert was president of the Pullman Company, the largest manufacturing corporation in the country."
"The 400 acre estate with its Georgian revival mansion and 13 historic buildings includes the home, formal garden and observatory; Welcome Center and The Museum Store in the historic carriage barn; 1903 Pullman car, Sunbeam; a solar powered goat dairy and cheese-making facility and the lower portion, the Dene, was recently incorporated into the guest experience."
