Table Of Content
After a few minutes, my eyes adjust, and I can see the intricate stenciling on the mahogany wood has intricate patterns. We crane our heads back to see the entirety of a grand dark wood staircase that winds upward. Our guide tells us about the family as he takes us through an ornate drawing room, a massive library, a botanical room, bedrooms, bathrooms, and up three flights of stairs. A short walk past the massive carriage house, which is not on tour, we’re at the side of the massive gothic Victorian. Access to the Mark Twain House is by guided tours only and groups queue up on the porch, one after the other, all day long. I headed for Hartford, Connecticut, to see the house while on a two-year road trip as a nomad, traveling in my van, hiking, visiting historic sites, and staying in short-term rentals.
Visit
Visitors on tour approach the entry via a long porch decorated in the stick style – meaning the railings and other décor are simple and sticklike. They pass terracotta-colored and black brick patterns in the wall, and then gather under a porte-cochere with gingerbread highlights before entering through a massive door. When it was built in 1874, it was nothing like the Italianate houses of its era in Hartford — “goods-box” houses, as a Twain biographer called them. In this special hour-long interactive tour, young visitors explore the everyday lives of the Clemens daughters—the books, games, and songs they loved, the subjects they studied, and the people they interacted with. Led by an experienced guide, this inquiry-based tour invites children to think about the ways that childhood and family life in the Gilded Age were similar and different to their own.
A Photo Tour of the Mark Twain House in Connecticut
Purchasing a library membership provides your patrons with access to Mark Twain’s historic home, as well as our Webster Bank Museum Center, featuring two exhibitions and a short film about Twain’s life by acclaimed filmmaker Ken Burns. Anyone can see the house’s exterior from its high vantage atop the hill, but you must enter through the museum and visitor’s center to go inside. As soon as you enter, you’ll know you’re in the right place because Twain himself greets you – twice. If you’ve had a long day and need a rest, you can sit on a bench next to a bronze statue of Twain, and he’ll obligingly put his arm around you.
North American Reciprocal Museum Program (NARM)
The interior of the home had rooms for his wife and all of his children, and a number of rooms devoted to luxury space. The interior was designed with input from Twain and featured an idiosyncratic layout. It is even rumored that the house was built to resemble a riverboat, although this is not readily apparent. Recently named one of the Ten Best Historic Homes in the World by National Geographic, the house features interior decor designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany, including elaborate stenciling and carved woodwork. Visit the Billiard Room where Twain did his writing and see the bed carved with angels where he slept.
It displayed the latest in modern innovations when it was built in 1874. The couple spent $40‚000 to $45‚000 building their new home‚ so once they moved in they kept the interior simple. Mark Twain and his family enjoyed what the author would later call the happiest and most productive years of his life in their Hartford home. Upon entering the foyer, my first impression was that the house was that it’s dark and busy.
Patterned Brick - Mark Twain House
The house has variously been described as a gingerbread house, a steamboat, a medieval stronghold, and even a cuckoo clock. The extensive wood bracing of the gables, porch, and railings link the house closely to the Stick Style, while its richly colored brick polychromy is in keeping with the High Victorian Gothic. The bloated scale (11,500 square feet with 25 rooms) and whimsical design were derided by the local press during its construction. The active and asymmetrical roofline, dominated by two massive gables with two smaller gables nestled between them and an octagonal tower on the southeast side, was among the most conspicuous attributes of homes like this. Under the two smaller gables, the front door is masked by a porte-cochere adjacent to the facade and connected to the large wraparound porch.
Clowning for Novices: History and Practice With Rose Carver
Join us from late November to January when the house is decorated for a Victorian holiday. Allow two hours for tour of the house and a visit to the museum center. Today the house has been marked a national landmark and has been restored to the opulent condition it was in when inhabited by Twain and his family. A museum was added during renovations and now visitors can not only learn about the author, but step right into his shoes. Twain had the Neo-Gothic mansion built in 1873, near the height of his literary fame and wealth. The large estate house featured intricate detailing across the exterior including gabled roofs and picketed red spokes across the spacious porch.
Carriage House - Mark Twain House
Twain’s 20 years in Hartford–he and his wife raised three daughters here–were happy ones and gave fruit to many of his best-known books. These included The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Life on the Mississippi (1883), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889), and what many believe to be the greatest American novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). House tours and museum admission are available seven days a week April through December, and six days a week (closed on Tuesdays) January through March.See below for a brief description. After losing a great deal of his money by investing in a shoddy printing press, Twain and his family were forced to move to Europe in 1891. Later on when Twain’s fortunes once again turned, one of his daughters passed away.
The museum is currently open 7 days a week from 9:30 AM to 4:30 PM. Final tours begin at 3:15 pm et!
Paths around these buildings are made of stone and gravel that can be uneven and slippery in some weather. Mark Twain’s historic carriage house is the third building on our property, but is generally not open to the public. The hayloft has been repurposed into offices and the main floor of the barn is a space available for rent for parties and meetings. Not long after completing the interiors, Clemens moved his family to Europe for a lecture tour due to financial problems. The family never returned to the residence and sold it 1903 to Richard Bissell. The Bissell family occupied the house until 1917 and it was subsequently leased to a boys’ school until 1922.
It was then subdivided into apartments and ultimately slated for demolition. In 1929, the Friends of Hartford organized and raised funds to purchase the house. For numerous years the Hartford Public Library rented out the first floor, and the rest of the house remained private apartments; the guest suite was developed into a museum-memorial room.
Mark Twain: A Missouri Native in a Yankee City - Yankee Institute
Mark Twain: A Missouri Native in a Yankee City.
Posted: Fri, 19 Apr 2024 19:42:07 GMT [source]
The building is very large for an 1874 barn and coachman's apartment. Architects Edward Tuckerman Potter and Alfred H. Thorp designed the outbuilding with styling similar to the main residence. Slate roofing was common during the time the Mark Twain House was being built in the 1870s.
For architect Edward Tuckerman Potter, multi-colored hexagonal slate afforded another opportunity to texturize and colorize the house he was designing for Samuel Clemens. Today, the billiard room might be called Mark Twain's "home office" or maybe even a "man cave," as the third floor was at a level separate from the rest of the house. The billiard room was often filled with as much cigar smoke as the writer and his guests could tolerate. Fashionable Victorian homes often included a conservatory, or small greenhouse. At the Mark Twain House, the conservatory is a round structure with glass walls and roof. "Glass Houses," like the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens in Pittsburgh, were very popular in America's Victorian era.
When Twain and Stowe lived in Hartford, the area would have a wooded wonderland with a small but booming downtown and a thriving literary community. Today, the road out front is busy, but back then, atop the hill it sits on, Twain would have seen a vast expanse of New England Forest and trees. Now, the space between Twain’s home and downtown is filled with homes, businesses and apartments. Clemens hired New York architect Edward Tuckerman Potter to design the family residence. Both Samuel and Olivia Clemens were intimately involved in the design process.
But Isabella remained undaunted by their, or anyone else’s, opposition. Guides are careful to point out the mass of work he did in the summer in Elmira, in the private hilltop study his sister-in-law Susan Crane built for him there; a picture of the study is on the wall as a visual aid. He stuffed manuscripts into a pigeonhole shelf to be picked up again, perhaps years afterward.
The memory of the lost child was too much for Twain’s wife and she was unable to return to their Connecticut home. While he lived in the house, Twain penned many of his most successful works including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. His time at the Connecticut house were some of his happiest, but they were not to last. Decorative corner brackets are characteristic of Victorian house styles, including Folk Victorian and Stick.
No comments:
Post a Comment