National Park Guide: Illinois' Lincoln Home

— -- Maria Hammon, a frequent visitor to the Lincoln Home National Historic Site, and Dale Phillips, its superintendent, share the same favorite spot inside the house.

Both love the wooden banister on the curving stairway to the second floor.

"You can run your hand along that banister and know that Abraham Lincoln ran his hand on the same place," says Hammon, 57, who lives in Decatur, Ill.

"It's original to the house," Phillips says. "Every member of the Lincoln family used it."

The house, which the Lincoln family occupied from 1844 until they moved to the White House in 1861, reflects life during that era.

Other preserved homes in the four-block area in downtown Springfield, Ill., convey a sense of what the neighborhood was like during their time there.

"You really get a feel for what he saw and did every day," says Laura Herman, 41, a computer analyst from St. Louis, who visited with her family last summer. "Being in his home makes him seem like a regular human being, not the bigger-than-life figure we think of today."

Hammon visits often, sometimes with her grandchildren, who are 6 and 9. "I want them to absorb this," she says. "I want them to understand his importance." She also loves the room shared by Lincoln's sons, because it reflects childhood innocence; the kitchen; and the parlor with its odd, stiff chairs.

The home, the only one Lincoln owned, contains a couple of dozen artifacts that belonged to the family and period furniture. "We try to show Lincoln as a human being," Phillips says. "He was the same as all the rest of us."

This summer is a good time to visit, Phillips says. Between June 8 and Labor Day, costumed interpreters portraying Lincoln and his neighbors will be at the site as part of Springfield's History Comes Alive program.

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About the park

Size: 12 acres

Visitors: 296,214 in 2011

Established: 1972

History: The house was built in 1839 and purchased by the Lincoln family in 1844. Robert Todd Lincoln donated it to the state of Illinois in 1887 with the condition that it be open to the public at no charge.

When visiting: Visitor center: 426 S. Seventh St., Springfield, Ill. 217-391-3226.

Of note: It is the only home Lincoln ever owned.