The Val-Kill National Historic Site in the Town of Hyde Park, the home of former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, is expected to be featured on a cable television network this month.
Carol Kohan, deputy superintendent of the Roosevelt-Vanderbilt National Historic Sites of Hyde Park, said last week that Val-Kill was one of 12 historic sites selected in 2005 to be featured on Home & Garden Television (HGTV) throughout June. Val-Kill, Kohan said, is being featured on the network’s “Restore America” segments.
“They’ll be playing various video clips on Val-Kill,” Kohan said. “It’s quite an honor to be selected.”
Emily Yarborough, public relations manager for HGTV, said earlier this week that “Restore America, a Salute to Preservation” is not a full-length show, but a series of 60-second vignettes on the historic site being featured.
Yarborough said the segments run at various times during the day and night during commercials between and during shows, and there is no specific time when they are aired.
“It’s a compressed feature on the monthly highlighted site,” Yarborough said. “Normally, the features are chosen and are run between the shows.”
Kohan said Val-Kill is an official project of Save America’s Treasures, an organization that works to preserve historic buildings and other structures, artwork and collections. Save America’s Treasures was founded in 1998.
Kohan said working with Save America’s Treasures and the National Trust for Historic Preservation was instrumental in having HGTV select Val-Kill for its cable television series.
“They wanted a variety of types of sites (for the show),” Kohan said. “Val-Kill is a wonderful site to showcase.”
Along with the network feature, Kohan said, HGTV gave a $75,000 grant to do restoration work at Val-Kill.
“It will be used to restore the historic floors in the Val-Kill cottage and museum object conservation,” Kohan said. “We’re replacing some of the carpets and doing other various work to get things looking good. We will restore a terrace at the playhouse on the site.”
Along with Val-Kill, the Web site listed 11 other featured sites: The Leo Carrillo Ranch of Carlsbad, Calif.; Hakone Gardens of Saratoga, Calif.; Drayton Hall of Charleston, S.C.; Edison & Ford Winter Estates of Fort Myers, Fla.; and the Paul Robeson House of Philadelphia; Sewall-Belmont House of Washington, D.C.; Molly Brown House of Denver; Pabst Manor of Milwaukee; First Hermitage of Nashville, Tenn.; Dunn Gardens of Seattle; and Ashton Villa of Galveston, Texas.
Kohan said working with Save America’s Treasures and the National Trust for Historic Preservation has been a good experience.
“It certainly has been wonderful,” Kohan said. “It’s a great partnership. We have a lot of great partnerships.”
The National Parks Service runs the Val-Kill site.