President Lincoln's summer retreat will open to public

Workers rolled out sod amid snow flurries Tuesday, determined that the summer home where President Lincoln and his family spent more than a quarter of his Washington life will look fully restored by Presidents Day.

The sprawling Gothic Revival cottage, likely to be Washington's next niche tourist attraction, lies only three miles north of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. But it's 300 feet higher than the swamp-level White House, hence is breezier and as much as 7 degrees cooler, according to Frank Milligan, the director of the President Lincoln's Cottage Project.

That might have been enough for Lincoln, who, between 1862 and his death in 1865, commuted 45 minutes each way daily by horse or carriage from June well into fall to escape the various forms of pestilence in the Civil War capital and to read, think and relax.

Despite a seven-year restoration by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Lincoln's cottage is like many summer houses: It doesn't look like much.

The exterior is pale brown stucco with green shutters and dark brown trim with modest scrollwork, more grand Ohio farmhouse than mansion. Inside, it has 12-foot ceilings and public rooms with good bones. If it has 34 rooms, as Milligan and National Trust President Richard Moe say, most are closed-off servants' warrens in the eaves.