Change Comes to Val-Kill

Eleanor was spending more and more time away from Val-Kill, and Nancy Cook, especially, was worn out with travels to West Virginia, trying to keep Val-Kill afloat, and coping with all the visitors that FDR and Eleanor to Val-Kill, when they came at all. In 1936 Eleanor announced that she was closing the furniture shop and renovating the building for her own privater residence next door, with an apartment for her secretary and close friend, Malvina "Tommy" Tompson. She Roosevelt picnics at Val-Kill continued, under Nancy's supervision, but the two households here geographically close but drifting irrevocably apart.