This Thursday I visited the Lincoln Cottage. It is easily accessed about 0.75 miles from the Georgia Avenue Metro Station on the Yellow and Green Lines. You just walk up Rock Creek Church Road to get there. There are also nearby Metrobus stops including the H8 that runs to/from the Georgia Avenue Metro Station or Brookland Metro Station if you go the other way on it. Note that the Georgia Avenue Metro Elevator is closed because of construction and this is not listed on the Metro’s elevator outage website. It was a minor inconvenience to have to take my brother, who uses a wheelchair, up the escalator because they never even announced it on the train when we got off that the elevator was out at this station, which they usually do. Anyways on the way back we took the H8 to the Brookland Metro Station, thanks to research done by the helpful staff at Lincoln’s Cottage.
We arrived about 30 minutes before our tour time and browsed through the exhibits at the Visitor Center. The exhibits are well done including interesting movies to watch in one area. There is also the interactive exhibit where you can look at the desks of different cabinet members in Lincoln’s time on a touch screen and touching the different papers zooms in so you can read them.
The tour starts in a small room in the visitor’s center. It starts with a short introductory movie about Lincoln and his times at the cottage. You are then taken over to the Lincoln Cottage for a guided tour. Since we had my brother we were taken around to a side entrance that led to an elevator to get to the first level of the house. The elevator is small and barely big enough for more than a wheelchair and two people. Probably best that just one person accompanies the person in a wheelchair. This elevator also goes to the second floor, which is kind of just a landing. From here there is a wheelchair lift to go up to the third floor, which is the second floor shown on the tour. The lift has not proved reliable to them and it has been working on and off since opening. When we visited it was not working. It was only about eight steps though to carry my brother and then the chair up the stairs.
On the tour we were shown a variety of rooms and told more about Lincoln and his time here, such as receiving guests and an assassination attempt that happened as he was riding home on night. Throughout the tour many of the rooms have a television that shows images as it is narrated in part by the tour guide, but mostly by a narration playing through speakers in the ceiling. Some rooms have just speakers and narration is played based on quotes people said. In fact the tour guide says very little themselves, but it is not that they are not knowledgeable because they will take questions and for the most part had no problem answering them. The only one she could not answer was understandable because it was not related at all to his time at the cottage.
Overall this is an interesting historical place to visit, although the rooms are all pretty bear because they have no original furniture. There is some replicated furniture placed in some of the rooms and you are welcome to sit on all the chairs. There is even a desk replicated from the original that used to be here, but is now in the Lincoln Bedroom at the White House.
