MASSACHUSETTS

From John Winthrop's sermon in 1630 exhorting his fellow Puritans to create a "City on a Hill" to Lowell native Jack Kerouac charting a course for the 1950s beat generation, Massachusetts is a cradle of expressive writing. Boston, Cambridge, and Concord were the hub of the literary and political awakening of the mid-1800s known as the American Renaissance, including the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, the Alcott family, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. In more recent times, Massachusetts produced the children's writer Dr. Seuss and many others. Many of the homes and workplaces of these authors still exist and are open to the public.

Theodor Seuss Geisel (1904-1991)
Theodor Seuss Geisel was born in Springfield in 1904 and grew up in the city's Forest Park neighborhood. Images of Springfield can be found throughout Dr. Seuss's work. After college, Geisel began working as a cartoonist and his work was published in The Saturday Evening Post. Later, Viking Press offered him a contract to illustrate a collection of children's sayings. With the publication of The Cat in the Hat, Geisel became an established and popular children's book author and illustrator. When he died in 1991, Geisel had written and illustrated 44 children's books.

Dr. Seuss National Memorial Sculpture Garden
Springfield Museums, State and Chestnut Streets
Springfield, MA
Phone: 800-625-7738

The Dr. Seuss National Memorial Sculpture Garden is now open at the Springfield Museums in Springfield. The garden contains large bronze sculptures of Dr. Seuss and his beloved characters: Dr. Seuss at his drawing board with the Cat in the Hat at his side; a 14-foot Horton the Elephant stepping out of an open book, accompanied by Thing One, Thing Two, Sam-I-Am, Sally, her brother, and Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose; and a storytelling chair.
Hours: Open daily, 9 a.m.-5 p.m.

Herman Melville (1819-1891)
Herman Melville enjoyed a privileged childhood in New York City. At age 22, he signed on the whaler Acushnet for a whaling voyage. Urged by his family, the young man began to write down the stories of his seafaring adventures, which led to the publication of Typee (1846), Omoo (1847), and more. In 1850, he was introduced to Oliver Wendell Holmes and Nathaniel Hawthorne, both of whom lived in western Massachusetts. Melville and Hawthorne became instant friends. Melville moved to the Berkshires, bought a farm, and named his house Arrowhead. There he wrote some of his finest works, among them his masterpiece, Moby-Dick.

Arrowhead
780 Holmes Road
Pittsfield, MA
Phone: 413-442-1793

Hours: Open daily from Memorial Day Weekend to Columbus Day from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tours begin every hour on the hour. Tours are available in the off-season by appointment only. Fee charged.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1883)

Sometimes called the Sage of Concord, Ralph Waldo Emerson was a preacher, philosopher, and poet. He wrote and preached on the harmonic connection between people and nature, and the relationship between the human soul and the Divinity. He was an abolitionist, a crusader for justice, and utopian, and a loyal supporter of other artists and crusaders of the time. The Emerson House, where he lived from 1835 to 1889, located at 28 Cambridge Turnpike in Concord, is now a museum.

The Old Manse
269 Monument St.
Concord, MA
Phone: 978-369-3909

The Old Manse was built about 1770 by the grandfather of Ralph Waldo Emerson. It sits alongside the Concord River near the North Bridge, where armed resistance of the Revolutionary War took place on April 19, 1775. Nathaniel Hawthorne and his wife, Sophia, lived in the house in the 1840s. The house includes two centuries of family furnishings, including Nathaniel Hawthorne's writing desk. A self-guided tour offers views of a vegetable garden based on one planted by Henry David Thoreau as a wedding gift to the Hawthornes. Guided house tours are offered.

Ralph Waldo Emerson House
28 Cambridge Turnpike
Concord, MA
Phone: 978-369-2236

Emerson lived in this home from 1835 until the time of his death in 1882. Touring the home offers an intimate view of Emerson's life and times.
Hours: Mid-April to October, Thursday to Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; Sunday, 2 to 4 p.m. Closed November to mid-April.

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)

Born in Salem, Hawthorne's writing successes got underway with the publication in 1837 of Twice-Told Tales, followed by The Scarlet Letter (1850), and The House of the Seven Gables (1851). The house in Salem that inspired the story is open to the public. The Nathaniel Hawthorne House, where the writer was born, has been moved to the seven gables property and also is open to the public. In 1842 the Hawthornes rented the Old Manse in Concord, an Emerson family home. In 1852, the Hawthorne family purchased a home in Concord from Bronson Alcott and moved there, renaming it The Wayside.

House of the Seven Gables
54 Turner St.
Salem, MA
Phone: 978-744-0991

The House of the Seven Gables — which constitutes its own national historic district on The National Register of Historic Places — was built in 1668 and is the oldest wooden mansion in New England. The grounds of the house also contain Hawthorne's birth home, which was moved there from its original site a few blocks distant.
Hours: Mid-January to June 30, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; July 1 to October 31, 10 a.m.-7 p.m.; November 1 to December 31, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Free parking and continuous guided tours.

The Nathaniel Hawthorne House

The Nathaniel Hawthorne House, a modest structure of Georgian style, was built in about 1750 and was originally located on Union Street in Salem. It was moved in 1958 to the property that contains the House of the Seven Gables. It was in this modest home that Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on July 4, 1804.

Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888)
A child of the gifted and nonconformist Alcott family, Louisa May Alcott is best known for her novel Little Women (1868). She was the daughter of Amos Bronson Alcott, an experimental educator of that time. Her sisters, Anna, Louisa May, Elizabeth, and May, were the models for Alcott's famous novel for girls. The Alcott family's home was Orchard House in Concord, where the family lived from 1858 to 1877, and where Louisa wrote Little Women. This home, virtually unchanged from the time the family lived there, is open to the public.

The Wayside
455 Lexington Road
Concord, MA
Phone: 978-318-7826

Located on the Battle Road in Concord, The Wayside was home to the Louisa May Alcott and her parents and sisters. Bronson Alcott sold the house in 1852 to Nathaniel Hawthorne. A later literary resident was Harriet Stone Lathrop (Margaret Sidney). A free exhibit provides a good general overview of the people and events of this time and place.
Hours: May through October. Call for days and hours of operation.

Orchard House
399 Lexington Road
Concord, MA
Phone: 978-369-4118

Orchard House is a combination of two houses dating to the early 1700s that Bronson Alcott bought and remodeled. Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women in this house and also set the scenes of the novel there. This often prompts visitors to exclaim that a walk through the house is like a walk through the novel.
Hours: April 1 to October 31, Monday to Saturday, 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m.; Sunday, 1 to 4 p.m. November 1 to March 31, Monday to Friday, 11 a.m.-3 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; Sunday, 1 to 4:30 p.m.

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
Readers of American literature are familiar with the credo of Walden, "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." An American essayist and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau became one of the central figures in the Transcendentalist group of writers and thinkers. He is best know for Walden (1854), a description of his time living on the shore of Walden Pond. His essay, Civil Disobedience (1849), was a protest against the Mexican War.

Walden Pond State Reservation
915 Walden Street/Route 126
Concord, MA
Phone: 978-369-3245

Walden Pond has been designated a National Historic Landmark and is considered the birthplace of the conservation movement. The reservation covers 400 acres and is popular for fishing, swimming, and walking. A replica of Henry David Thoreau's house is available for viewing by the public. To protect the natural resources of the area the number of visitors is limited. Visitors are encouraged to call the park in advance and check on parking availability. Year-round interpretive programs and guided walks are offered.

Edith Wharton (1862-1937)
Edith Wharton was born into privileged society in New York City, but she cast off the strictures of a limited life bound for marriage and society. She wrote 40 books, including The Age of Innocence, Ethan Frome, and The House of Mirth. She wrote authoritatively on many subjects, including architecture, gardens, interior design, and travel. She was the first woman to received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction; an honorary doctorate of letters from Yale University; and membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

The Mount
Route 7 and Plunkett Street
Lenox, MA

Edith Wharton designed the house and the gardens of the Mount in 1902, using the principles she declared in her book The Decoration of Houses (1897). She believed the design of a house should respect the principles of proportion, harmony, simplicity, and usefulness. She also thought of gardens in architectural terms. She thought of her gardens as outdoor rooms and she created unique compositions suited to the house and the natural surroundings.
Hours: Open May1-October 31, daily, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Fee charged.

Sleepy Hollow Cemetery
Bedford Street
Concord, MA
Phone: 978-318-3233

Sleepy Hollow was one of the first U.S. cemeteries to be designed with a wooded character and it is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. "Authors Ridge" is the burial place of Henry Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Louisa May Alcott, and Bronson Alcott. A popular attraction of the cemetery is the sculpture Mourning Victory. Commissioned to memorialize the Civil War, the memorial was created by Daniel Chester French, who also designed the Minuteman Statue at Concord and the Lincoln Statue in Washington, D.C.

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst to a highly educated and politically dynamic family. She began writing poems at about the age of 20, first in a conventional style and later in more experimental ways. She was exceedingly private, spending most of her time after the age of 23 alone in her bedroom. Her work is believed to have heavily influenced modern poetry, particularly through its irregular rhymes, broken meter, and unusual metaphors.

Emily Dickinson Museum
280 Main Street
Amherst, MA
Phone: 413-542-8161

Emily Dickinson Museum consists of two historic houses in the center of Amherst. The Homestead was the birthplace and home of Emily Dickinson. The Evergreens, next door, was home to her brother Austin and his family. The tour begins at the Homestead and continues to The Evergreens.
Hours: dOpen March through mid-December. Admission to the museum beyond the Tour Center is by guided tour only.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1837-1882)
Possibly the most popular American poet of the 19th century, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and his works are still studied and copied. His most famous pieces include Evangeline (1847), The Song Of Hiawatha (1855), and The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858). He was born in 1807 in Portland, Maine. His father was a congressman and mother was a descendant of John Alden of the Mayflower. Longfellow's later poetry reflects his interest in establishing an American mythology. Longfellow's image in marble is located in Westminster Abbey, London, in the Poet's Corner.

Longfellow National Historical Site
105 Brattle Street
Cambridge, MA
Phone: 617-876-4491

From 1837 to 1882 this was the home of one of the world's foremost scholars. The house is also significant in America's Colonial history. As commander-in-chief of the new Continental Army, Gen. George Washington planned the siege of Boston from a headquarters at this house between July 1775 and April 1776. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow enjoyed enormous popularity during his lifetime and he played a central role in the intellectual life of 19th-century America.
Hours: check Web site for seasonal hours of operation.

Old Corner Bookstore
3 School Street
Boston, MA

Typical of the buildings of Boston in Colonial days, the Old Corner Bookstore was built as an apothecary for druggist Thomas Creese in 1718, and it became a literary center in the mid-19th century. The work of writers Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Louisa May Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and others were published by Ticknor and Fields Co., whose offices was located here. The building is no longer a bookstore.