What is the importance of Hyde Park (New York City) in the novel, White Houses?

While Franklin was president, when the Roosevelts were not at the White House, they vacationed in Hyde Park, a town in upstate New York. Hick notes that Franklin and Eleanor had separate houses there. His was called "Top Cottage" (136), and he would go there with his various mistresses, and hers was called "Val-Kill" (136) - "a rabbit warren of rooms with plenty of space, a library, and a communal dining room" (13). Hick recalls spending many vacations with Eleanor at Val-Kill, and how she would imagine their future life their together, how "Our love would create its own world and alter the real one...I could see the stand of birch trees, at the edge of the stream...I could hear the rocking chairs on the porch" (136).