Lincoln's Private Getaway Reopens
16th President's Cottage, A Refuge From War, Now Restored To Original Condition
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A reproduction of Abraham Lincoln's desk at President Lincoln's Cottage located on the grounds of the Soldier's Home, in Washington. A $15 million, seven-year restoration has returned the landmark to its original condition. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
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Lincoln and his family moved to the 34-room Gothic Revival style house located three miles north of the White House in 1862, to escape the heat, congestion and noise of wartime Washington. (CBS)
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Play CBS Video Video Lincoln's Cottage Restored President's Day took on a special meaning in Washington D.C., where Lincoln's private summer home was opened to the public after a $15 million restoration project. Bob Orr reports.
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Video Notebook: Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln is remembered for being a voracious reader in his youth. Katie Couric comments on his relish for reading.
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Video The Truth Behind Lincoln On this holiday weekend devoted to all our presidents, it is Abraham Lincoln who still captures our imagination while provoking our questions. Russ Mitchell reports.
He found it in a breezy cottage on the grounds of the Old Soldiers' Home, just three miles - a short horseback ride away - from the White House.
While it overlooked a cemetery full of Civil War dead, it became Lincoln's summer place, a retreat where the embattled President went to think.
Here Lincoln worked on the Emancipation Proclamation. And it was here he spent 13 months, a full fourth of his Presidency.
Now, Richard Moe of the National Trust for Historic Preservation hopes his ten-year dream to restore this forgotten Lincoln Memorial will inspire.
"We believe the place can tell stories," Moe told CBS News correspondent Bob Orr. "It's one thing to read history; it's another thing to walk through and touch it and feel it. It really comes alive in a different kind of way. And that's what happens when you walk through this cottage. Abraham Lincoln comes alive."
After $15 million and seven years of work, the old Lincoln getaway was re-opened today: 34 sparsely-decorated rooms, featuring original furnishings and woodwork, authentic to the Civil War Era and those summer days from 1862 to 1864.
"This isn't a traditional museum with velvet ropes and a lot of furniture," Moe said. "This is a museum of ideas: Union, freedom, emancipation. Those are the ideas that made us the country we are today."
Lincoln we're told found comfort at the cottage, and at least once dodged danger to get here, surviving a sniper attack that left a hole in his old stovepipe hat.
But THAT'S just one of the stories that can now be re-told, reclaimed along with this house, once lost to American History.
For more information visit the Web site for President Lincoln's Cottage At The Soldiers' Home
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