[3][4][5] Built in 1938-39, during Roosevelt's second term as President of the United States, it was designed to accommodate his need for wheelchair accessibility.

[4] Although it was meant as a retreat, FDR also received notable guests at the cottage, including Britain's King George VI and Queen Elizabeth.

It is one of several buildings in Hyde Park and surrounding communities that FDR ensured were built in that style, which he hoped to revive in the region.

It is located at the end of Potters Bend Road, a residential street in a rural area of Hyde Park, at the top of the 500-foot (152 m) ridgetop unofficially known as Dutchess Hill where Roosevelt had played as a child.

He realized he would need a more isolated retreat, "a small place to go to escape the mob..."[3] Two years later, Roosevelt and his cousin Margaret Suckley spent some time together on the top of the hill, with a view over the Hudson River to the Catskill Mountains, and were both impressed by the possibilities.

[10] In October of that year he suggested it would be the perfect spot for "a one-story fieldstone two-room house ... one with very thick walls to protect us."

By that point in his life, he needed to use a wheelchair for much of the time due to his paralytic illness and could only walk short distances with great difficulty and assistance, a fact he and others concealed from the public.

He designed the cottage to accommodate the wheelchair, with one flat floor and everything he could want or need located within easy reach of someone in a sitting position.

Top Cottage is the only presidential residence, other than Thomas Jefferson's Monticello and Poplar Forest, designed by a president.

The following year it was recognized as a National Historic Landmark, and the OSI began renovations, removing Elliott Roosevelt's additions and thinning some of the trees that had obstructed the view.