Eisenhower Retirement Home, Pennsylvania

After Dwight D. Eisenhower’s presidency ended in 1961, and while the Eisenhower’s were involved in designing his Presidential Center in Abilene, they were living, most of the time, in semi-retirement on a farm in Pennsylvania. The Eisenhower’s bought the farm in 1950, motivated primarily by Mamie Eisenhower. She worked with architects on the additions and transformations of the existing structures into a new house with eight bedrooms and nine bathrooms. It was finally finished by 1955, and they moved in full time in 1961. Inside there would be enough space for her collections of ceramics and family furnishings. Mamie Eisenhower would live there after her husband died until her death in 1979. A smaller structure, based on an existing farmhouse on the site, was her husband’s domain within the home. Its interior more dark and clubby. They spent a lot of time on the east-facing sun porch. Here the President could practice golf, his favored pastime, on a putting green installed by the PGA as a thank you for his dedicated promotion of the sport over his lifetime. The green overlooks the Gettysburg Battlefield, immediately adjacent to the house, a fitting place for a military man to end up, though a very somber and blood-soaked landscape to have in a backyard.