Has there ever been a more manly president than Theodore Roosevelt? Big-game hunter in Africa, soldier leading the Rough Riders up Cuba’s San Juan Hill, cattle rancher and defender of the mighty bison ...

We like to picture Theodore Roosevelt as this vigorous, energetic, hyper-manly guy. And he was. But he didn’t start that way. He began as a bedridden, asthma-stricken boy in New York’s East Village.

Officials and historians praise its location but acknowledge the rural site and the region’s often brutal winters could be ...