Spec-tacular history in Dobbs Ferry!
In a recent issue of the Rivertowns Dispatch, the question was asked whether any presidents had visited the Rivertowns. It was interesting to learn that Teddy Roosevelt spent a boyhood summer in our little village of Dobbs Ferry, and that it was then, learning to shoot, that he realized he needed glasses.
As one of our most famous bespectacled presidents, we are proud to acknowledge TR as an OG glasses dude of the Rivertowns.
From the Fall 2011 issue of the Dobbs Ferry Historical Society Ferryman newsletter, we get some more color about the episode:
No matter how often he fired away, he could hit nothing. Disconsolately, he watched the other boys take his gun and, according to his memoirs, “bag the invisible.” The final blow came when the boys read aloud huge letters on a distant sign. Teddy could not even see the letters!
It was then that Teddy’s father made his second momentous decision: he took Teddy to an eye doctor, who fitted him out with his first pair of spectacles. Thus Teddy’s life was transformed as a new world opened up to him. In the words of Edmund Morris, another biographer: “Through the miraculous little windows that now gripped his nose, the world leaped into pristine focus, disclosing an infinity of detail, of color, of nuance, and of movement just when the screen of his mind was at its most receptive.” (Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt p. 52)
In many early photos it appears he is wearing a pence-nez with attached cord, but in later years he updated to a more modern look with a round wire frame and saddle bridge. To get TR’s look we recommend these frames from our collection:
Masunaga 198-T
Gotti Switzerland Adan
