Walking With the Roosevelts: NYC History Comes to Bayport-Blue Point

Walking With the Roosevelts Through New York City

Historian and author Bill Bleyer will bring the Roosevelt family’s New York story to life at the BBP Heritage general membership meeting on Sunday, February 15, 2026, from 2:00 to 4:00 pm at the BBP Library.

Drawing from his latest book, The Roosevelts in New York City, Bleyer will guide guests through the Manhattan neighborhoods where generations of Roosevelts lived, worked, and worshiped. Expect an armchair walking tour that includes the brownstone on East 20th Street where future president Theodore Roosevelt spent his formative years, today preserved as Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site. He will also spotlight the influence of uncle Robert Barnwell Roosevelt, who lived next door in a twin brownstone and helped kindle Theodore’s passion for conservation, a story with special resonance given Robert’s past summers in Bayport.

Bleyer, a longtime Newsday staff writer and Pulitzer Prize winner, has built a reputation for making regional history vivid through books on Long Island’s maritime past, Sagamore Hill, and other local landmarks.  His new volume traces the Roosevelt family from their earliest days in New York City to later homes in Manhattan, including the East 65th Street townhouse commissioned by Sara Delano Roosevelt for Franklin and Eleanor. 

Hosted by the Bayport-Blue Point Heritage Association, the program is open to all, with books available for purchase and signing. 

Residents are encouraged to mark their calendars, bring a friend to the Bayport-Blue Point Library, and take this opportunity to connect local history to the Roosevelts’ wider legacy, from Bayport’s own Meadow Croft to the streets of New York. Bayport-Blue Point Heritage Association