This plaque is on the southern face of 13 West Street, next door, appropriately, to the Brattle Book Sellers, one of the nation's oldest antiquarian booksellers. The plaque reads:
"Novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne once described 15 West Street as 'Mrs. Peabody's caravansary,' in reference to the diverse activities of the Peabody family who from 1840 to 1854 made their home in this building. In the front parlor, daughter Elizabeth opened a bookstore, the first in Boston to offer works by foreign authors. Here she and Ralph Waldo Emerson published The Dial, the quarterly periodical of the Transcendentalist poets. Here also, journalist-critic Margaret Fuller held her famous 'Conversations' which today are considered landmark tracts in the history of American feminism. In the private rear parlor, daughter Sophia in 1842 married Hawthorne, and daughter Mary in 1843 married Horace Mann, the father of public education in America. During the years the Peabody family lived on West Street, they were hosts - and friend - to many who helped broaden American thought and literature."