The armchair was a 72nd birthday gift to the poet from the schoolchildren of Cambridge, carved from the same sort of spreading chestnut tree that he had made indelible in his poem The Village Blacksmith.. [47], In 1962, the trust successfully lobbied for the house to become a national historic landmark. Dustin Stonecipher "All are architects of fate, working in these walls of Time; some with massive deeds and great, some with ornaments of rhyme." These words, penned by Henry. In 1968, Longfellow closed and Nokomis Community Library opened, instantly doubling Longfellow's circulation numbers. We depend on ad revenue to craft and curate stories about the worlds hidden wonders. Henry and Fanny had six children: Charles, Ernest, Fanny, Alice, Edith, and Anne Allegra. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection. [19] Short-term residents of the home included Jared Sparks, Edward Everett, and Joseph Emerson Worcester. In her poem to Washington, she described the conflict between Britain and the colonies, and wrote in glowing terms about Washington being first and place and honours, and Famd for thy valour, for thy virtues more, before concluding with four lines that foreshadowed his future as the leader of the new country: Proceed, great chief, with virtue on thy side, IT WAS NOT until Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's wife died in a fire that he stopped shaving and grew a beard. "The Old Clock on the Stairs" a poem by Longfellow. The house also served as headquarters for General George Washington during the Siege of Boston, July 1775 - April 1776. [21] During the Longfellow family's time in the home, very few structural changes were made. .mw-parser-output .geo-default,.mw-parser-output .geo-dms,.mw-parser-output .geo-dec{display:inline}.mw-parser-output .geo-nondefault,.mw-parser-output .geo-multi-punct,.mw-parser-output .geo-inline-hidden{display:none}.mw-parser-output .longitude,.mw-parser-output .latitude{white-space:nowrap}445458N 931251W / 44.916149N 93.214134W / 44.916149; -93.214134, The Longfellow House in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, is a 2/3 scale replica of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1759, at the age of 21, he had his fathers old house demolished, and he replaced it with this home here on Brattle Street, located about a half mile west of the center of Cambridge. [26], Longfellow moved to Cambridge to take a job at Harvard College as Smith Professor of Modern Languages and of Belles Lettres,[27] and rented rooms on the second floor of the home beginning in the summer of 1837. [39] The family hosted artists, writers, politicians and other famous people. 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. The letters address the political climate of the era, including the growing enmity with Britain. When Longfellow moved into the Craigie house, he could have had no idea that he would one day own it outright, that he would live and write there until he grew old and died, and would be laid out in the same room where his wife met her gruesome accident. Across the street from the Longfellow HouseWashington's Headquarters National Historic Site is the municipal park known as Longfellow Park. [38], Longfellow oversaw the creation of a formal garden, and his wife oversaw decorating the interior. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow American poet. These words, penned by Henry Wadsorth Longfellow, aptly describe the history of the palatial Longfellow House. Here in this room she died: The words take on eerie power as you stand in the library of Longfellows house, where Fanny Longfellow caught fire that dreadful July day, or in the bedroom where she died the next morning. Elizabeth Craigie "would sit by the open window and let them crawl over her white turban. CHS Archival Resources Longfellow House Overview: The Longfellow House's archival collections are made up of materials ranging in date from 1659 to the 1950s and are primarily organized around the papers of multiple generations of the Dana and Longfellow families. Craigie House served for a time as George Washington's Revolutionary War headquarters. This logic-defying 16th-century Tudor manor still stands to the delight and astonishment of onlookers. [14] On Twelfth Night in January 1776, the couple celebrated their wedding anniversary in the home. Renovations and lavish spending soon bankrupted the Craigies, and they were forced to take on boarders, one of whom was young Harvard professor and poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who marveled to friends and colleagues that he was living in rooms that were once George Washingtons chambers., In July 1843, Longfellow married Fanny Appleton, whose wealthy father, Nathan Appleton, gave the house to the couple as a wedding gift. This building is the only remaining full-scale replica of Longfellow's original home maintaining all the original historical character. 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 Longfellow HouseWashington's Headquarters National Historic Site (also known as the Vassall-Craigie-Longfellow House and, until December 2010, Longfellow National Historic Site) is a historic site located at 105 Brattle Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts. But she changed her mind when he called her attention to a book on her side table titled Outre-Mer, a recent best-selling prose account of a young mans sojourns in Europe, and identified himself as its author. His poetry turned out to be too comfortable, too confirming, too crafted to withstand the 20th-century blast of modernist thought and the withdrawal of poetry from the open air of the marketplace and into the academic laboratories, where poems like his that lodged in the brain by virtue of their metrical regularity and transparent meaningListen my children and you shall hear/Of the midnight ride of Paul Revereoffered so little to dissect. Harrison. Built in the Georgian style in 1759.; It served as the headquarters of George Washington (1775-1776). In 1972, the home and all of its furnishings were donated to the National Park Service, and it is open to the public seasonally. He eventually moved his zoo a few miles south into an area next to the Minnehaha Creek. For a time, Longfellow's home was one of the most photographed and most recognizable homes in the United States. Specific visitors included Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, singer Jenny Lind, and actress Fanny Kemble. The library purchased it for $1,500, $500 of which was raised by neighbourhood residents. Longfellow spoke eight languages, wrote or translated as a young professor his own French and Spanish textbooks, later formed the famous Dante Club in which, canto by canto, he tried out his translation of The Divine Comedy in front of great minds like William Dean Howells, James Russell Lowell and Charles Eliot Norton. The house in Portland was built by the poet's grandfather, General Peleg Wadsworth, in 1785-1786. Andrew Craigie had been the first Apothecary General of the American army, and bought the house in 1791. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.. She had embarked on the Grand Tour with her father and her cousin William, but by the time she met Longfellow, William was dying of the same disease. [9] She brought with her Washington's nephew George Lewis as well as her son John Parke Custis and his wife Eleanor Calvert. Like us on Facebook to get the latest on the world's hidden wonders. A majestic mansion designed in Mughalai style, complete with a turquoise onion dome. Because Longfellow was such a famous literary figure during his lifetime, he frequently received notable guests here at his house. 2023 Atlas Obscura. Even today, the house endures as a symbol of American style and as an important site of American history. There is also a replica in Aberdeen, South Dakota on Main St. Longfellow HouseWashington's Headquarters National Historic Site, Longfellow House-Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site, Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, List of National Historic Landmarks in Massachusetts, National Register of Historic Places listings in Cambridge, Massachusetts, List of Washington's Headquarters during the Revolutionary War, "National Park Service Visitor Use Statistics", The George Washington Papers: Provenance and Publication History, "Longfellow House-Washington Headquarters National Historic Site", Longfellow National Historic Site Archives, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Longfellow_HouseWashington%27s_Headquarters_National_Historic_Site&oldid=1169236664, This page was last edited on 7 August 2023, at 22:32. 1822: The Josiah Collidge House, a farmhouse, is . The information on the following pages was drawn largely from Laura Fecych Sprague's essay, "The Wadsworth-Longfellow House: Its History and Restoration" in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and His Portland Home. The Longfellow House archives also include a variety of individual items connected to the American Revolution. One of the earliest replicas was created for the 1895 Cotton States and International Expositions In Atlanta, Georgia. These elements contained a blend of the old and the new. Andrew Craigie, Washington's Apothecary General, was the next person to own the home for a significant period of time. That same house was later purchased in 1856 by another Bowdoin professor and later Civil War hero and Maine governor Joshua L. Chamberlain, who would make significant changes and renovations to the property over the years. He wrote most of his works here, including his famous epic poems Evangeline and The Song of Hiawatha, along with notable shorter poems such as Paul Reveres Ride and The Village Blacksmith. However, this house was also the site of a tragedy when, in 1861, Fanny died from severe burns after her dress caught on fire. For information about the park, visit the National Park Service website for Longfellow House - Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site: nps.gov/long A historical garden, period furniture and artwork, and an archive make the Longfellow House near Boston a destination for visitors and researchers alike. As Frances Longfellow wrote, "we are full of plans & projects with no desire, however, to change a feature of the old countenance which Washington has rendered sacred". [28], Longfellow's new landlady had earned a reputation for being eccentric[23] and often wore a turban. The site also possesses some 750,000 original documents relevant to the former occupants of the home. How I am alive after what my eyes have seen, he wrote, I know not.. 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. English: The Longfellow House-Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 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. The year was 1837. In a partnership with the Minnesota Department of Transportation, the house was moved across the highway by Ernst Movers of Osseo, Minnesota and thus reconnected with Minnehaha Park which the house had been separated from. The remainder of 1776 would prove to be a difficult time for Washington, who suffered a series of defeats in the late summer and fall. [53], The original 1759 house was built in the Georgian architectural style. Today, very little has changed in this scene since the first photo was taken more than a century ago, and it survives not only as an excellent example of colonial-era Georgian architecture, but also as an important connection to both George Washington and to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
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