Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt loved picnics. One of their favorite sites was two miles from Springwood on the banks of Fallkill Creek. Late in 1924, as ER and her friends and political associates, Marion Dickerman, and Nancy Cook, picnicked with FDR beside the stream, the women noted sadly that this would be their last outing of the year. FDR suggested that they build a cottage on the property that could be used as a year round retreat. He drew up a lease giving all three of them a life interest in the property, hired an architect, Henry Tombs, and appointed himself general contractor. The three women shared the $12,000 construction cost and Stone Cottage was completed in 1925.

What began as a longing for an informal place to enjoy the company of friends and family, grew into a vibrant center of ER's complex public and private life. Val-Kill served as a permanent residence for Dickerman and Cook, a retreat for ER, and a place to relax and entertain guests for the entire Roosevelt family. When FDR was not in residence at Springwood, ER stayed at the Val-Kill cottage with her friends. Over time, Val-Kill's facilities for relaxing and socializing were extended to include a pond for boating, a pool, tennis court, stables, outdoor fireplace, and flower gardens, as well as the surrounding meadows and forests owned by FDR.

One afternoon ER told her friends that she and FDR had "often wondered if it would be possible to establish some small industries in the local areas that would provide income for men who could not make a living, or all of their living, from agriculture, and that would also provide interests for rural women." Cook jumped at the idea and suggested that they start a "small factory and copy early American furniture." In 1926, the women built a larger building near the stone cottage in which they established Val-Kill Industries. The simple, well-made furniture, pewter and weaving produced at Val-Kill is highly valued by collectors today. Like FDR's experiments with tree farming on his Hyde Park estate, which influenced the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and other forestry programs he initiated as governor of New York and president, ER's experience with Val-Kill Industries helped shape her interest in Arthurdale and other New Deal efforts to create self-supporting rural communities.

When the factory closed in 1936 during the Great Depression and after a rift developed in her relationship with Nancy Cook and Marion Dickerman, ER remodeled the building as a residence. The rambling structure, made up of about twenty rooms of various sizes, provided living quarters for herself and her secretary, Malvina ("Tommy") Thompson, and guest rooms for the many children, grandchildren, and guests who would visit her there during the years that followed. Now she no longer had to share the stone cottage with her friends and was fully in charge of her own domain. She took pleasure in selecting and arranging the furniture and books as she liked and decorating her house with photographs of family and friends. ER relished her time there and loved to sleep on her second-floor sleeping porch overlooking the pond, especially "the still nights . . . with only the stars to look at, just because it gives one a feeling of taking in." After FDR's death on April 12, 1945, ER made Val-Kill her home and when she was not traveling or staying at her apartment in New York City, lived there simply, often surrounded by family, friends, and other guests.

ER considered Val-Kill to be her first real home, the place where she "emerged as an individual," the place she "used to find myself and grow." She had spent much of her childhood in her grandmother's homes and much of her adulthood in homes provided by, and ruled over, by Sara Delano Roosevelt, her mother-in-law. The cottage gave her a place of her own to which she could invite her friends and where she could exercise her growing independence from Sara and from FDR. Val-Kill served as a peaceful place where ER could write and restore her energy and a relaxed gathering place for family and friends, but it was also her base of operations. She wrote many of her books and columns at Val-Kill. As she later told friends, "Val-Kill is something of my own."

Val-Kill expressed the way ER's private and public lives were closely interwoven. Marion Dickerman and Nancy Cook were her business and political partners, as well as her friends. Val-Kill often functioned as an informal, ongoing conference center where ER's friends, political associates, children (who sometimes violently disagreed about politics), and other guests debated the issues of the day or planned political activities. She even invited her students from Todhunter School for picnics and canoe rides and her graduate students form Brandeis University down for weekend retreats. Guests remembered ER's warm hospitality, the flowers she cut in her garden and placed in her guests' bedrooms, and the lively debates at meal time when often up to a dozen people would gather around the table. Gustav Ranis, a student who spent a weekend at Val-Kill the summer after his graduation from Brandeis, wrote to say how much he enjoyed his visit: "The discussion of Saturday night, for instance, when we all sat around in a big circle and even the very capable chairman had a hard time keeping order, was an extremely stimulating and memorable experience for me."

ER hosted groups of young people, students from the Wiltwyck School (a school for delinquent youth for which she also labored to raise funds), civil rights and labor activists, members of foreign delegations to the United Nations, dignitaries such as Nikita Krushchev and John F. Kennedy, and other visitors. She made Val-Kill available in the summer for youth training institutes for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the United Nations, the Encampment for Citizenship, and other social justice organizations. Sometimes ER arranged for people whom she thought ought to meet each other to come together at Val-Kill even when she wasn't there. "Is there a chance that you would be free to dine at my cottage on July 12^th?" she wrote to Gore Vidal on July 6, 1960. "I will not be at home but Congressman and Mrs. Richard Bolling of Missouri will be visiting me, and I know they would enjoy a chance to chat with you."

ER continued to spend as much time as possible until September 1962 when illness forced her to return to New York City. Her son John lived at Val-Kill until 1970 when he sold it to two physicians who, in 1973, tried to rezone the property so that they could build health clinics, housing, and a nursing home on the grounds. Several local women opposed the destruction of ER's home and, working with Curtis Roosevelt and New York political leaders, in 1977, they led a successful effort to pass legislation creating The Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site.

Today, ER's home is operated by the National Park Service and the stone cottage houses the Eleanor Roosevelt Center at Val-Kill. Since 1984, when Val-Kill was opened to the public, it has served as a conference center where people gather to discuss some of the issues with which ER was concerned.