Mark Twain's House and Memorial Library - Hartford, CT
Posted by: 
Hikenutty
N 41° 46.068 W 072° 41.444
18T E 691947 N 4626573
This is the beloved Connecticut home that Mark Twain had built for his family. He said that his happiest times were spent at this place. The building is now a museum and open for public tours.
Waymark Code: WM2Y3Y
Location: Connecticut, United States
Date Posted: 01/08/2008
Views: 83
The following excerpt is from "Connecticut: A Guide to its Roads, Lore and People":
MARK TWAIN'S HOUSE AND MEMORIAL LIBRARY (1873), 351 Farmington Ave. This huge, rambling, twenty-room, red and yellow brick structure of Victorian-Gothic architecture was built by Mark Twain who resided here from 1874-1879. In 1929 it was acquired by the Mark Twain Library and Memorial Commission and partially restored. The stair hall is rich with quartered oak and inlaid paneled walls of various woods. In the Memorial Room is a bust of the humorist modeled from life by Louis W. Potter, and a large model of the Mark Twain Memorial; the latter representing characters from his books flanking the seated figure of Clemens, is to be erected at Hannibal, Missouri, the author's birthplace. Mr. Clemens had the kitchen and servants' quarters built in the front part of his house so that they could look out the windows 'to see the parade go by.' As he commented, 'It saves time and wear on the rugs.' Unusual features in the Mark Twain House are a Tiffany window over the main fireplace and, in the rear, an addition constructed like a pilot house, which served the elderly author as a reminder that he had, at one time, been a Mississippi River steamboat pilot.
The Twain house is defined mostly by the variety and unpredictability of its elements. No two elevations are alike; various chimneys and towers rise spontaneously in contrast to the calming, broad sweep of the deep porches.
This commitment to experimentation can also be seen in the exotic interiors designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany and his partners in Associated Artists. Cultures and styles from around the globe are celebrated in the dense network of pattern, texture, and color throughout the first floor of the house. Northern Africa, the Far East and India are woven together in an elegant eclecticism that helped set a new standard for the Gilded Age.
New technologies were also employed that included a gravity flow heat system, split flues to allow for windows over two fireplaces, and seven bathrooms with flush toilets. In addition, Twain was both proud of, and flummoxed by, his telephone, one of the very first installed in a private home.
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. Twain wrote: "To us, our house . . . had a heart, and a soul, and eyes to see us with; and approvals and solicitudes and deep sympathies; it was of us, and we were in its confidence and lived in its grace and in the peace of it benediction."
The Mark Twain House was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1963. The restoration was largely completed for the house's centennial in 1974. This early preservation of a Victorian home set the stage for, and encouraged, similar projects throughout the nation. In 1977, the National Trust for Historic Preservation honored the museum with the David E. Finley Award for "exemplary restoration."
The Museum is open Monday through Saturday 9:30 a.m. - 5:30 p.m. and Sunday 12 - 5:30 p.m. The cost is $13 for adults, $11 for Seniors, and $8 for children ages 6-16. Under age 6 is free.