Still, despite these difficulties, Washington maintained the respect of the majority of his soldiers, and his leadership would prove instrumental in the ultimate success of the American Revolution. 59 Wadsworth Longfellow House Stock Photos & High-Res Pictures 2023 Atlas Obscura. George Washington occupied it as his headquarters beginning on July 16, 1775, and it served as his base of operations during the Siege of Boston until he moved out on April 4, 1776. [22] Craigie married Elizabeth while living in the house; she was the daughter of a Nantucket clergyman and only 22 years old, 17 years younger than he. I live in a great house which looks like an Italian villa, Longfellow crowed to a friend after he moved in. The House Where Longfellow Lived - HistoryNet In addition to his homes on Congress Street in Portland and Brattle Street in Cambridge, there were two other houses in the United States that Henry briefly called home, one of which is still standing and operating as a museum. [46] Their intention was to preserve the home as a memorial to Longfellow and Washington and to showcase the property as a "prime example of Georgian architecture". Longfellow's descendents occupied Craigie House until 1950. Craigie's financial situation at the time of his death in 1819 forced his widow Elizabeth to take in boarders, and one of those boarders was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Longfellow - Cambridge [41] Emperor Dom Pedro II of Brazil also visited the house privately and requested the company of Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., and James Russell Lowell. In addition to a bust of the poet, a carved bas-relief by Henry Bacon depicts the famous characters Miles Standish, Sandalphon, the village blacksmith, the Spanish student, Evangeline, and Hiawatha. [28], Longfellow's new landlady had earned a reputation for being eccentric[23] and often wore a turban. Until then his clean-lined New Englanders face had been smooth-shaven, his eyes bright and beaming. It was in this house that Longfellow wrote Evangeline and The Song of Hiawatha. Beloved poems like The Childrens Hour were set within its rooms. Its fame continued to grow after Longfellow's death. [30] His landlady, Elizabeth Craigie, died in 1841. Wadsworth-Longfellow House, Portland, Maine. Artist Cyrus Walker explores the line between Western fact and fiction. 4,114 were here. Follow us on social media to add even more wonder to your day. Elizabeth Craigie "would sit by the open window and let them crawl over her white turban. Longfellow House - Washington's - National Park Planner During his time in Cambridge, Washington did not fight any major battles, although the idea of assaulting British-occupied Boston was a frequent topic of discussion here at his councils of war. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Unless otherwise specified, Lost New England does not own or claim rights to any of the historic images used on this site. [10] Mrs. Washington reported to a friend that "some days we have [heard] a number of cannon and shells from Boston and Bunkers Hill". The library overcame this circulation drop, so much so that in 1967 the Library Board authorized the construction of a new library in the nearby Wenonah neighborhood. Around this time, he was courting Fanny Appleton, the daughter of prominent merchant Nathan Appleton. Alice was involved in a number of philanthropic causes and historic preservation efforts, including working with other family members to establish the Longfellow House Trust, which preserved the family home and its contents. I ARRIVED at the Longfellow House on a bright summer morning and joined a tour that was just beginning at the back of the building. Life is earnest! The library performed well, serving the south easternmost portion of Minneapolis until the 1950s, when the growing prevalence of television cut circulation numbers at the library in half. By another, her youngest daughter was playing with matches at her feet. [55] The lyre shape proved impractical and a new design was made with the help of a landscape architect named Richard Dolben in 1847. Follow us on Twitter to get the latest on the world's hidden wonders. Longfellow House conveys so strongly a sense of hearth and home that its easy to forget what a driven traveler its owner wasWant action, he once complained in a letter to a friend, want to travelam too excitedtoo tumultuous inwardly. It was no armchair poet who sat in that spreading chestnut armchair. Because Longfellow was such a famous literary figure during his lifetime, he frequently received notable guests here at his house. [6] It was then renovated by the Kodet Architectural Group. The site also possesses some 750,000 original documents relevant to the former occupants of the home. Consider supporting our work by becoming a member for as little as $5 a month. Category : Longfellow National Historic Site - Wikimedia The Longfellow House archives also include a variety of individual items connected to the American Revolution. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow oversaw the creation of the original garden, shaped as a lyre, shortly after his wedding. TRY OUR NEW MOBILE APP This article originally appeared in the June 2013 issue of American History magazine. The three major collections that include Revolutionary America-related materials are the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana papers, the Dana Family papers, and the Wadsworth-Longfellow Family papers. Although slavery was not widespread in the colony, it was not uncommon for wealthy families to have several enslaved domestic servants. [13] In his study, he also confronted Dr. Benjamin Church with evidence that he was a spy. Six children were born to Henry and Fanny there. She recovered enough to go on to Rotterdam, but once there she began to steadily weaken and grow feverish. . He carried her up to their second floor bedroom, known today as the Gold Ring room because of a large curtain ring that hangs from the ceiling over the sleigh bed. In order to reduce her expenses, she took in boarders during much of this time. This clock was bought AFTER the poem was written, Note the ring on the ceiling. The Longfellow House, Cambridge, Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 1807-1882, Homes and haunts, Dwellings, United States, Massachusetts, Cambridge, 1900. A yellow frame house with porches at each end,[4] he lived there for the next 23years until he closed the zoo, due to complaints from nearby residents. www.MaineHistory.org info@mainehistory.org American Revolution Materials: The collections at the Longfellow House related to the American Revolution are spread through a number of different files: many members of the Longfellow-Dana family were amateur historians, and materials from the Revolution-era are sorted mainly by the individual who obtained them. During the early 1980s, it was used by the March of Dimes and Minneapolis Jaycees as "Ghost Manor", a haunted house attraction every year at Halloween. Cambridge, Following a number of name changes instituted by the National Park Service in recent years, the Cambridge, Massachusetts mansion that served for nearly 50 years as home to noted poet Henry Wordsworth Longfellow is now officially listed as the Longfellow House - Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site. The Longfellow House does not actively purchase materials for its collections, but does take donations and is particularly interested in expanding their collections associated with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana. The garden was recently restored by an organization called Friends of the Longfellow House, which completed the final stage of its reconstruction, the historic pergola, in 2008. The property became the Longfellow National Historic Site, and it has been open to visitors ever since, although in 2010 it was renamed the Longfellow HouseWashingtons Headquarters National Historic Site. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. The couple was interested in the house because of its historic associations, even though Longfellow considered its style decidedly conservative. His new wife, Fanny, put it best when she explained: We are full of plans and projects with no desire, however, to change a feature of the old countenance which Washington has rendered sacred.. Its first owner, John Vassal, was a British sympathizer who fled at the Revolution's outset, in 1775, making the residence available to General George Washington and the Continental Army. A crown, a mansion, and a throne that shine, That is because the house, built in 1759, was where George Washington lived in 1775 and 1776, when he was forging the Continental Army and pressing the Siege of Boston. Standing beneath a portrait of Longfellows three daughters, our guide thoughtfully recited lines from The Childrens Hour: From my study I see in the lamplight,/Descending the broad hall stair,/Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,/And Edith with golden hair., A few moments later we were standing in that same study, where Longfellow had watched his children coming down the stairs, and vowed to them in verse And there I will keep you forever,/Yes, forever and a day.. The Wadsworth-Longfellow House, Portland, Maine. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow lived in one of two houses for most of his life: the Wadsworth-Longfellow House on Congress Street in Portland, Maine, where he grew up; and Craigie House, the 1759 colonial mansion in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he lived from 1837 until his death in 1882. While teaching at Bowdoin from 1829 to 1835, Henry rented 3 rooms in a two-story cape in Brunswick, Maine. He came home to Maine, taught French and Spanish at Bowdoin College, published essays and translations, married the daughter of a Portland judge, was offered a professorship at Harvard and wrote Outre-Mer, the book that brought him to the notice of his future landlady. To the occupants of this house, it was more than the sum of its parts banisters, pilasters and verandas. All rights reserved. The house was eventually donated to the National Park Service in 1972, and is now a wonderfully maintained historic landmark. 24 Fabulous Things to Do in Cambridge, Massachusetts This move was likely motivated in part by the fact that, at the previous house, he had to share space with General Charles Lee, and also with the Harvard president. [32] Nathan Appleton purchased the house in 1843 for $10,000; Longfellow married his daughter Frances, so Appleton gave him the house as a wedding gift. One of the earliest replicas was created for the 1895 Cotton States and International Expositions In Atlanta, Georgia. Even today, the house endures as a symbol of American style and as an important site of American history. Contributor Names Detroit Publishing Co., publisher Created / Published [between 1890 and 1899] Subject Headings - Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth,--1807-1882--Homes & haunts . When I left the Longfellow House and walked out onto Brattle Street carrying a brand-new copy of the Selected Poems, I left with the poets trochees and hexameters in my head. Originally built by businessman Robert "Fish" Jones, it currently serves as an information center for the Minneapolis Park System and is on the Grand Rounds Scenic Byway. Longfellow House Washington's Headquarters - Yelp [13] She used the front parlor as her personal reception room, still furnished with the English-made furniture left behind by the Vassalls. Seven months later, in the Swiss Alps, he met Fanny Appleton, the daughter of a Massachusetts industrialist of lordly wealth. It was a place that gave structure to their daily lives and was an artistic expression of their values. LONGFELLOW HOUSE WASHINGTON'S HEADQUARTERS - 117 Photos & 30 Reviews - 105 Brattle St, Cambridge, Massachusetts - Museums - Phone Number - Yelp Museums Outstandingly preserved home of not one but two American icons: and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Who, except wretched schoolchildren, now reads Longfellow? wrote the literary critic Ludwig Lewisohn in 1932. From here, the army laid siege to Boston, confining the British to what was, at the time, a geographically small seaport town on a narrow peninsula in the middle of the harbor. 2.3K views By Natalie Rothstein He was a young 30-year-old professor about to start his teaching career at Harvard. The house at that time was owned by Elizabeth Craigie, whose late husband, Andrew, had bought the property in 1791. The Longfellow House on Brattle Street in Cambridge, around 1910-1920. The Balkans: Landscapes and Memories of Yugoslavia, Peru: Machu Picchu and the Last Incan Bridges, Antiques and Their Afterlives: Stories from the Collection of Ryan and Regina Cohn, Monster of the Month w/ Colin Dickey: Gilles de Rais, Think Like A Museum: Curate Your Personal Collection with Alexis Hyde, Historical Nonfiction: Research-Based Writing With Hadley Meares, 3D Paper Art: Pop-Ups and Paper Engineering With Yoojin Kim, Big Shots, Small Creatures: Macro Photography With Joseph Saunders, How to Read a Landscape: Botany & Ecology With Annie Novak, Rewilding His Corner of Ireland's Beara Peninsula Is One Man's Labor of Love, Podcast: A Whale of a Tale with Daniel Kraus, Meet the Glowing 'Worms' of the American South, Preserving the LGBTQ Legacy of One of America's Most Historic Homes, http://www.longfellowfriends.org/index.php, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longfellow_House%E2%80%93Washington%27s_Headquarters_National_Historic_Site. About Longfellow Bar. The last family to live in the home was the Longfellow family, who established the Longfellow Trust in 1913 for its preservation. After her father's death in 1882, Alice Longfellow commissioned two of America's first female landscape architects, Martha Brookes Hutcheson and Ellen Biddle Shipman, to redesign the formal garden in the Colonial Revival style. The collection is rich in material both from the era of the American Revolution and related to its commemoration during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: the house itself is thought to have served as a hospital following the Battle of Bunker Hill and was General George Washingtons headquarters while stationed in Cambridge during the Revolutionary War (July 1775-April 1776). Longfellow had a disability, and family members who - Cambridge Day He would write at the center table, at the desk, or in the armchair by the fire. He had grown up in a home in Portland, Maine, in which an engraving of Washington hung over the mantelpiece, and through his grandfather Peleg Wadswortha hero of the Revolutionary Warthe family had acquired a lock of the gen-erals hair snipped by Martha Washington herself and protected in a gold locket. During this time, he improved the house and the surrounding grounds, and he frequently held lavish parties here, with attendees such as Prince Edward, who was the father of Queen Victoria. Its main exterior features included symmetrical windows, classically-inspired pilasters, and a pediment crowning the large entryway. Offer available only in the U.S. (including Puerto Rico). Shattered and guilt-stricken, Longfellow sent his wifes body home to her parents in a lead coffin and robotically continued his pilgrimage. . "The Old Clock on the Stairs" a poem by Longfellow. They sounded like something close to the American heartbeat. [19], The Longfellow HouseWashington's Headquarters National Historic Site is noted for its garden on the northeast end of the property. He and Fanny ultimately married in 1843, two years after the death of Elizabeth Craigie, and Appleton purchased the house from her heirs as a wedding gift for Longfellow. The grounds and garden are open year round daily, dawn-dusk. His early fame and persistent wooing finally led Fanny to relent, and they were married in 1843. Once extending from the Harvard University Observatory to the banks of the Charles River, the 107-acre Vassall estate stretched across prime Cambridge real estate. In the case of the Vassalls, though, they had at least seven slaves living here at this house, which was an unusually large number for colonial Massachusetts. [41] His second wife Fanny died in the home in July 1861 after her dress accidentally caught fire. The archives also contain a collection of a materials related to commemorations of the American Revolution and Washingtons time in Cambridge. Like us on Facebook to get the latest on the world's hidden wonders. Longfellow House, Cambridge Massachusetts Photo: istockphoto.com If you find yourself in Cambridge, Massachusetts, visit Longfellow House. [4] Colonel John Glover and the Marblehead, Massachusetts Regiment occupied the house as their temporary barracks in June 1775. He recorded in his journal: "It is a singular circumstance that, while I am engaged in preparing for the press the letters of General Washington which he wrote at Cambridge after taking command of the American army, I should occupy the same rooms that he did at that time. Whatever his reasons for choosing this house, the George Washington who arrived here in July 1775 was in many ways very different from the man who would ultimately come to be known as the father of his country. Andrew Craigie, Washington's Apothecary General, was the next person to own the home for a significant period of time. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) | Mount Auburn Cemetery There are also materials discussing the Early Nationalist period including an account of dining with George and Martha Washington while a delegate to Congress in Philadelphia (1791) and two accounts of Washingtons birthday celebrations in Philadelphia, the latter of which took place soon after his death (1794, 1800).
Monroe College Women's Basketball Roster, Parchment Application Site, Articles L