With 2021 seeing a new president installed in the White House, we take a look at the homes where past leaders of the free world spent their formative years. Joe Biden paid a much-publicised pilgrimage to his modest childhood pad in Scranton while on the campaign trail last year, but other presidential boyhood properties are less well-known. Running the full gambit from a one-room log cabin to a sprawling mega-mansion that rivals the White House, they are often not what you’d expect. Click or scroll to discover more…
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Abraham Lincoln’s Kentucky cabin
The president who steered the Union to victory in the Civil War and abolished slavery before his infamous assassination in 1865, Abraham Lincoln was born to hard-up pioneers Thomas and Nancy on 12 February 1809 in a run-down one-room log cabin on Sinking Spring Farm near Hodgenville, Kentucky, the homestead they bought for a couple of hundred dollars the year prior. The family lived in the rickety 18 by 16-foot dirt-floor property for a further two years.
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Abraham Lincoln’s Kentucky cabin
Unlike many other presidential boyhood homes, which have been meticulously preserved for posterity, Lincoln’s was unceremoniously torn down well before his rise to prominence and no trace of it exists. Instead, a ‘symbolic’ cabin was cobbled together on the site in 1895 and eventually housed inside a monumental Grecian-style temple that was completed in 1911, effectively creating the first Lincoln Memorial.
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Abraham Lincoln’s Kentucky cabin
The spartan log cabin, which is a probably as best an approximation as any of the 16th president’s erstwhile home, sits proudly within this grand neo-Classical edifice at the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace site. Symbolising the American dream, Lincoln’s roots show how anybody, through sheer hard work and dedication, can rise to the top in the country, no matter their background.
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Abraham Lincoln’s Kentucky cabin
The ‘symbolic cabin’ structure is devoid of furniture and other contents but the museum adjacent to the memorial has recreated the interior, which as you can see is very sparsely furnished, apart from a bed, table and chairs, and some practical necessities such as a rifle, pots, pans and Mrs Lincoln’s spinning wheel.
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Herbert Hoover’s ordinary Iowa cottage
Staying with presidents who came from humble beginnings, Herbert Hoover, whose administration was upended by the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and subsequent Great Depression, arrived in the world on 10 August 1874 in this decidedly ordinary but rather adorable white clapboard cottage in West Branch, Iowa.
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Herbert Hoover’s ordinary Iowa cottage
Hoover’s blacksmith father Jesse built the house in 1871 with the help of his father Eli and operated a smithy across the street. While a step up from Lincoln’s log cabin, the board and batten cottage measures just 20 by 14 feet and consists of only two rooms: a combined living room, dining room and kitchen, along with a separate bedroom.
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Herbert Hoover’s ordinary Iowa cottage
Hoover, who lived in the cottage for three and a half years, regarded it as “physical proof of the unbounded opportunity of American life” and bought the home in 1935, long after it was sold on by his father. Before it was opened to the public, the property was restored to its original state with missing furniture replaced with similar antique pieces, like the austere rocking chairs and wooden-backed sofa.
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Herbert Hoover’s ordinary Iowa cottage
The bedroom has few creature comforts or luxuries apart from the wooden bed and cradle, a replica of the one baby Hoover slept in. Rag rugs cover the floors and the home is lit by kerosene lamps. There are patchwork quilts for warmth and a sewing machine table, which would have been something of a status symbol back in the 1870s, at least for the poorer in society.
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Franklin D Roosevelt’s magnificent New York estate
In contrast to Lincoln and Hoover, Franklin D Roosevelt came from a privileged ‘old money’ background and was born on 30 January 1888 at Springwood, the family’s 33-acre estate in Hyde Park, Upstate New York. The president, who is best remembered for guiding America through the Great Depression and the Second World War, resided at the property for the rest of his life.
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Franklin D Roosevelt’s magnificent New York estate
The estate was purchased in 1866 by FDR’s father for $40,000 (£29k), a fortune at the time, and the mansion originally had a grey clapboard exterior when the future president was born. The property was treated to a major makeover the 1910s when it was extended and revamped in a grander Colonial Revival style. During FDR’s presidency, Springwood was a bolthole for the president. Known as the ‘Summer White House’, hosting dignitaries including King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, who were treated to a hot dog picnic.
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Franklin D Roosevelt’s magnificent New York estate
The home’s largest space, the luxurious library and living room, houses parts of FDR’s extensive book, coin, stamp and other collections. The chintzy drawing room is equally as fancy. There’s also a music room in the house brimming with valuable porcelain and lacquerware and the ‘Snuggery’, the room Roosevelt’s mother commandeered as her relaxation and writing sanctuary.
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Franklin D Roosevelt’s magnificent New York estate
FDR’s childhood bedroom is shown here, one of the 18 bedrooms in the house. The only president to serve four terms gifted the estate to the nation in 1943 and it was designated a National Historic Site and opened to the public following his death two years later. FDR is buried on the estate and his presidential library and museum is located within the grounds.
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John F Kennedy’s classy Massachusetts house
John F Kennedy was born on 29 May 1917 in this handsome clapboard nine-room house in Brookline, just outside Boston. In the years since his death, the property has become a shrine of sorts to the 35th POTUS, whose presidency, which paved the way for civil rights legislation but struggled at times to diffuse Cold War tensions, was brutally cut short by his assassination in 1963.
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John F Kennedy’s classy Massachusetts house
While nowhere near as grand as FDR’s mansion, JFK’s boyhood home rocks the same Colonial Revival architectural style. Kennedy’s father Joe, who at the time was cutting his teeth as a businessman and investor, bought the house in 1914 shortly after marrying JFK’s mother Rose for $6,500, (£4.8k) the equivalent of just $169,000 (£124k) in today’s money.
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John F Kennedy’s classy Massachusetts house
The house was kitted out with all mod cons from indoor plumbing, gas and electricity to modern appliances and furnished in a traditional style. A piano Rose received as a wedding gift was displayed in the parlour, which was tastefully furnished, as were the dining room and bedrooms, particularly the lady of the house’s second-floor boudoir.
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John F Kennedy’s classy Massachusetts house
A child who was often ill, JFK would have spent much of his time in the nursery though he was actually born in the master bedroom. Two of his favourite childhood books, King Arthur and his Knights and Billy Whiskers and His Kids, can be spotted on a chair. In 1920, the house was sold and the Kennedys moved to a mansion several blocks away. Following the president’s assassination, it was reacquired by the family, who donated it in 1967 to the National Park Service.
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Richard Nixon’s simple California bungalow
The president who will forever be synonymous with the Watergate scandal that led to his shock resignation was born on the 9 January 1913 in a simple Craftsman-style bungalow in Yorba Linda, California. Nixon’s citrus farmer father Frank used a kit home to build the family residence in 1913 on land in his eight-acre orchard, not a bad effort at all considering he was a mere DIY-er.
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Richard Nixon’s simple California bungalow
The one-and-a-half storey house squeezes in a living and dining room, kitchen, pantry and sewing room, as well as two bedrooms: the ground-floor master bedroom where Nixon’s parents slept and a second smaller room on the upper level that the future president shared with his three brothers.
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Richard Nixon’s simple California bungalow
The family’s living and dining room is homely and traditional. The piano was Nixon’s prized possession as a kid and he went on to compose a concerto and even appeared on The Tonight Show to perform it, this time playing a pricey grand rather than a cheap upright. The china and ornaments on the other hand belonged to Nixon’s mother, Hannah.
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Richard Nixon’s simple California bungalow
Like the other rooms in the bungalow, the upper-level bedroom the boys shared looks pretty much how it did when the president lived there. The Nixons moved out in 1922 and the home changed hands several times before it was purchased in 1978 by a group of businessmen and donated to the Richard Nixon Foundation, which restored it with the original furnishings.
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Jimmy Carter’s modest Iowa farm
Jimmy Carter, who had a mixed presidency marred by economic stagnation at home and several crises abroad, spent much of his childhood in a modest farmhouse in Archery, Iowa. His father, who went on to find success as a peanut grower, bought the farm in 1928 when the future president was four years old.
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Jimmy Carter’s modest Iowa farm
So the legend goes, Carter’s dad had forgotten the key on the day the family were moving in, so got his young son to crawl through an open window to unlock the front door. While the house is typical of a middle-class rural dwelling in the 1920s, it had no indoor plumbing or electricity for years.
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Jimmy Carter’s modest Iowa farm
The living room is similar to that of several of the president’s predecessors in that it contains an upright piano but unlike Nixon, Carter has never composed a concerto. Strangely for modern eyes, the room lacks a coffee table and is light on furniture and other objects, which include a three-seater sofa and Art Deco wireless.
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Jimmy Carter’s modest Iowa farm
In addition to Carter’s bedroom, the house features a master for his parents that his little brother shared initially, and a bedroom where the future president’s sisters slept. Carter moved out in 1941 to go to college and the farm was sold in 1949. It eventually came under the ownership of the National Park Service, which restored the property to its 1920s appearance and opened it to the public.
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Bill Clinton’s elegant Arkansas pad
The son of a travelling salesman who died three months before his birth on 19 August 1946, Bill Clinton lived with his maternal grandparents for his first four years while his mother was studying nursing in New Orleans, no doubt in an attempt to support her son as best she could and give him a better life.
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Bill Clinton’s elegant Arkansas pad
The child who would go on to navigate the nation through the longest period of peacetime economic expansion and survive impeachment, was cared for by the couple in their elegant house in Hope, Arkansas, which was built in 1917 by a doctor who designed it to resemble a house he’d owned in France.
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Bill Clinton’s elegant Arkansas pad
Spanning a generous 2,100 square feet, the attractive green and white two-and-a-half storey house consists of six rooms, ranging from the living and dining rooms, which were decorated with quality furniture, to a traditional kitchen and three spacious bedrooms.
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Bill Clinton’s elegant Arkansas pad
They include the young Bill Clinton’s, whose bed was covered with a Hopalong Cassidy blanket. The future POTUS moved out in 1950 when his mother remarried but continued to visit until his grandparents passed away. The home was then sold on but became a National Historic Site in the 1990s after it was snapped up by the Clinton Birthplace Foundation.
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George W Bush’s Texas ranch-style home
Decades before he served a two-term presidency which saw him dealing with the 9/11 attacks, the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and the global financial crisis of 2007 – 2008, George W Bush lived in this quaint little house. He moved together with his parents and siblings into this basic one-frame suburban home in Midland, Texas in 1951 at the age of five.
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George W Bush’s Texas ranch-style home
George H W Bush, aka Bush Senior, had relocated his wife Barbara and family to the town to get himself established in the oil business but given he was just getting started, the future 41st president didn’t have an awful lot of money to splash on a home. In any case, the three-bedroom ranch-style property did just fine and proved to be more than ample for the growing Bush family.
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George W Bush’s Texas ranch-style home
The open-plan living room, which is partly clad in fetching ‘knotty pine’ panels, has a rustic stone fireplace and features a feature bow window and nook for reading and relaxing. The furniture looks comfortable and relaxing and we can just imagine this family living room getting a lot of use.
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George W Bush’s Texas ranch-style home
Other rooms in the house including the cosy den and the future two-term president’s bedroom are also clad in pine panels. The Bush family lived in the house for four years before they left for a fancier pad as Bush Senior’s business flourished. In 2001, a local board of realtors bought the house, had it restored to its appearance when the family resided there and opened the property to the public in 2006.
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Barack Obama’s humble Hawaii Craftsman
The child who would later on in life become America’s first president of colour and lead the nation to economic recovery following the Great Recession lived together with his mother Stanley Ann Durham and maternal grandparents in a compact Craftsman-style home in the Manoa neighbourhood of Honolulu from 1964 to 1967 when he was between the ages of three and six.
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Barack Obama’s humble Hawaii Craftsman
At the time, Obama’s mother was studying at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, which is located a block away from the house. Measuring 1,976 square feet, the home features three good-sized bedrooms, two bathrooms, an open-plan living space and dining room, kitchen, den and a separate guest cottage with an additional bedroom.
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Barack Obama’s humble Hawaii Craftsman
One of the nicest things about the house is the 334-square-foot covered lanai porch, the perfect place to kick back. Other plus points of the property are the hardwood flooring throughout, stylish French windows, extra-large windows that let in lots of light and nice touches like the ceiling fans and solid wood wall panels.
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Barack Obama’s humble Hawaii Craftsman
The house has passed through several owners and tenants since the future leader of the free world resided there. It was last sold in 2006 for $1.3 million (£950k) and was put back on the market in early 2020 with an asking price of $2.2 million (£1.6m), and eventually sold for $1.9 million (£1.4m).
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Donald Trump’s Mock Tudor house in Queens
Born on 14 June 1946, Donald Trump lived in this picture-perfect Mock Tudor mansion for the first four years of life. The house, which is located in the leafy and upscale Jamaica Estates section of New York’s Queens borough, was built in 1940 by the future president’s real estate developer father Fred. Though well-appointed, this modest house is run-of-the-mill compared to the outgoing president’s glitzy Manhattan penthouse and opulent Mar-a-Lago estate.
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Donald Trump’s Mock Tudor house in Queens
Coming in at 2,500 square feet, the brick, stucco and half-timbered house has a total of five bathrooms and four-and-a-half bathrooms, a capacious living and dining room, as well as a library. The house was last sold in 2017 for $2.1 million (£1.5m), the owner having bought the property a year earlier for $1.4 million (£1.m).
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Donald Trump’s Mock Tudor house in Queens
While Trump flirted with acquiring the house, according to The Guardian it was snagged by a mystery Chinese investor and then listed on Airbnb several months after it sold in 2017. Priced at $727 (£532) a night, the New York Times reported that there appeared to be few takers as the house seems to be empty most of the time.
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Donald Trump’s Mock Tudor house in Queens
After attempting to sell it at auction in 2018, the house was put back on the market for $2.9 million (£2.1m) in February 2019, according to Realtor, but it was withdrawn without a sale. There is now an active GoFundMe page to raise $3 million (£2.2m) from Trump fans to buy the house as a thank you gift for the departing POTUS but so far the campaign has only managed to raise $6,888 (£4.9k).
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