105 Brattle Street, Cambridge
617-876-4491
What's
New?
A visit to the Boston area is not
complete without a walk down Cambridge’s most historical and
celebrated roads, Brattle Street. Here you will find beautiful
mansions, which were homes to the wealthy loyalists of King George
and the reason the street got its name "Tory Row." The
Longfellow National Historic Site- an impressive yellow mansion
where Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and his family once resided- is
considered "Tory Row’s" most historic house. It also
served as George Washington’s headquarters for nine months
during the siege of Boston in 1775-76.
The estate was a wedding present to
poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and his wife Frances from her
father, Nathan Appleton, a wealthy textile industrialist who
founded the city of Lowell in Massachusetts. The Longfellows
raised three daughters and two sons in the 22-room house, which in
1913 would be preserved in a trust as a gift to the public by
their children. The family furnishings on the main floor are
exactly as they were when Henry and Francis lived here.
The house’s history begins in
1759 when John Vassal, Jr., son of a wealthy West Indies
plantation owner and a well known Tory sympathizer, had it built
for his bride. After loyalist Vassall fled to England, the estate
became the barricks for John Glover and his band of fisherman
militia from Gloucester who latter became the first Navy of the
United States.
In 1775, General Washington took
over the house as his headquarters where several significant
events in American history took place. Benjamin Franklin and
members of the Continental Congress meet here to resolve the
issues of rebuilding the army. Henry Knox, future Secretary of War
in the first cabinet, was made Colonel and responsible for the
army’s artillery here, and Martha and George Washington
celebrated their wedding anniversary by throwing a large party on
December 12th 1775.
In 1790, Dr. Andrew Craigie, an
apothecary general in the Revolutionary War, bought the estate for
his bride. Craigie, mostly known for building the 1809 Canal
Bridge, left so much debt upon his death his wife Elizabeth was
forced to take in lodgers.
Among her prominent boarders was
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow who came in 1837 after recently being
appointed Smith Professor of Modern Language at Harvard.
Longfellow’s diary documents the many guests who came to visit
him at Craigie House including close friends Charles Sumner and
Nathaniel Hawthorne, distinguished publisher James T. Fields,
family friends such as the Lowells, Danas and Howells, and poet
Bret Harte.
Charles Dickens also visited in
1843 and again in 1867 after Francis’s accidental death in 1861
when her dress caught on fire as she was sealing envelops
containing her children’s curls.
In 1972, the family’s trust
donated the property to the National Park Service, who oversee the
grounds, provide daily tours of the house and gardens, and
maintain an archival library for researchers. The library contains
materials on the Longfellow, Dana and Appleton families, and
includes 10,000 books, 100,000 papers and 10,000 photographs. Some
of the items date back to the revolutionary period and belonged to
the house during George Washington’s residency. Temporary
exhibits of these materials are on display in the visiting center
throughout the year.
Hours:
House Museum and Gardens
March through December
Monday, Tuesday Closed
Open Wednesday through Sunday
10a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Ranger-guided tours
Wednesday through Sunday only
10:45a.m., 11:45 a.m. and every
hour on the hour from 1p.m. to 4 p.m.
Group tours by advanced reservation
only
Note: Note the museum is currently
closed for rehabilitation until March 2001. During the
renovations, there is an additional tour offered of the Brattle
Street Neighborhood and Gardens, call 617-876-4491 for further
information on times and days.
Admission/fees:
Adult: $2.00
Children: Free under age 16
Parking:
Limited on street parking
Two on-site handicap spaces
available
