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Mark Twain House
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The Mark Twain House and Museum was the home of Mark Twain (a.k.a. Samuel Langhorne Clemens) from 1874 to 1891 in Hartford, Connecticut, USA. Before 1874, Twain had lived in Hannibal, Missouri. The architectural style of the 19-room house is Victorian Gothic.
The house is also notable for the major works written during his residency, including The Gilded Age, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper, Life on the Mississippi, Huckleberry Finn, A Tramp Abroad and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
Bad financial investments caused the Twain family to move to Europe in 1891.
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Encyclopedia
The Mark Twain House and Museum was the home of Mark Twain (a.k.a. Samuel Langhorne Clemens) from 1874 to 1891 in Hartford, Connecticut, USA. Before 1874, Twain had lived in Hannibal, Missouri. The architectural style of the 19-room house is Victorian Gothic.
The house is also notable for the major works written during his residency, including The Gilded Age, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper, Life on the Mississippi, Huckleberry Finn, A Tramp Abroad and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
Bad financial investments caused the Twain family to move to Europe in 1891. When they returned to Connecticut in 1900 he lived in a house built for him in Redding, Connecticut named Stormfield, where he died on April 21, 1910. His home in Hartford functioned as a school, an apartment building, and a library after that. In 1962 it was declared a National Historic Landmark. Since 1974 it has had a multi-million dollar renovation and an expansion dedicated to showcasing his life and work.
The house is facing financial troubles stemming in part from an overestimation of the number of visitors it would receive yearly.
Life in the house
Mark Twain moved to Hartford in 1871 and purchased the property for his new house in north Hartford. He did so to be closer to his publisher, American Publishing Company. Of Hartford, Twain said, "Of all the beautiful towns it has been my fortune to see, this is the chief... You do not know what beauty is if you have not been here." While in Connecticut, the family remarked "[the house] had a heart, and a soul, and eyes to see us with."
The top floor was the billiards room and his private study, where Twain would write late at night; the room was strictly off limits to all but the cleaning staff. It was also used for entertaining male guests with cigars and liquor. Twain had said "There ought to be a room in this house to swear in" and "It's dangerous to have to repress an emotion like that."
The children had their own area, with a nursery and a playroom/classroom. Twain played with his children in the conservatory, pretending to be an elephant in an imaginary safari. Twain noted the house "was of us, and we were in its confidence and lived in its grace and in the peace of its benediction."
Twain loved living in the house, partly because he knew many different authors from his Hartford neighborhood, such as Harriet Beecher Stowe who lived next door and Isabella Beecher Hooker. Also, he would stop in to visit his friend, actor William Gillette at Gillette Castle (today Gillette Castle State Park).
In 1881, with the success of Tom Sawyer, Twain had Louis Comfort Tiffany supervise the interior decoration of the house. Twain was also fascinated with new technologies, leading to the installation of an early telephone in the entrance hall. In that same year, Twain formed the firm Charles L. Webster & Company, which published Twain's writings along with Ulysses S. Grant's memoirs.
The company went bankrupt in 1894 because of the automated typesetting machine, leaving Twain with a large amount of debt. After enduring several bank panics and losses from investments in a typesetting machine, the Twains moved to Europe in 1891 where living was cheaper.
Twain began lecturing across the continent to recoup some money for their family, but tragedy prevented their return to the house. In 1893 Twain's publishing company went bankrupt, daughter Susy Clemens died of meningitis in 1896 after a visit to Hartford, and Olivia refused to ever visit the house again. In 1903 the house was sold.
Architecture and construction
The house was designed by Edward Tuckerman Potter, an architect from New York City. When the house was being built, the Hartford Daily Times noted, "The novelty displayed in the architecture of the building, the oddity of its internal arrangement and the fame of its owner will all conspire to make it a house of note for a long time to come." The total cost of the house was $40,000, paid out of Mrs. Clemens' inheritance.
The house was built on of land and designed with seven bedrooms, seven bathrooms, a carriage house, and plant-filled conservatory. Bay windows extend up to form turrets that were topped with porches, allowing Twain and guests a view of what was a very pastoral area of Hartford. The home is in the style of Victorian Gothic Revival architecture, including the typical steeply-pitched roof and an asymmetrical bay window layout. Legend says the home was designed to look like a riverboat.
Post-Twain
In 1905 the house was significantly repaired, but it was also significantly altered, deviating from its original design. This was known to have caused marked uproar among the northeastern Missouri intelligentsia. The chimneys and brick work were also altered. The house was used as a private home, a boys' school, and an apartment building.
In 1929, a group of preservationists, the Friends of Hartford, formed the Mark Twain Memorial and Library Commission and purchased the building to prevent its demolition. They rented the ground floor to meet expenses. During this period, doors were added to the building, further deviating from the original design. The house was restored in the 1950s and declared a National Historic Landmark in 1963.
The house was opened as a museum in the 1960s. The process of paying off the mortgage; raising money to restore the deteriorating property; and retrieving artifacts, furnishings, and personal possessions took many decades and ended in 1974, just in time for the 100th anniversary of the house. The house earned the David E. Finley Award in 1977 for "exemplary restoration" from the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Recent renovations
Restoration and preservation at the Mark Twain House helped bring the house and grounds back to the years between 1881 and 1891, when the Twains most loved the house. The marble floor in the front hallway underwent a historic restoration, and specialists re-stenciled and painted the walls and ceilings and refinishing the woodwork to recover the Tiffany-decorated interiors. Restoration was funded in part by two federal Save America’s Treasures grants totaling $3 million. Scanning computers were also used in the restoration. The home today contains 50,000 artifacts: manuscripts, historic photographs, family furnishings, and Tiffany glass. Many of the original furnishings, including Twain's ornate Venetian bed, an intricately carved mantel from a Scottish castle, and a billiard table, remain at the house.
With the number of admissions leveling off around 53,000, the house's trustees decided that they must expand or be forced to shrink their operations. They commissioned Robert A. M. Stern, the founder of the Manhattan architectural firm that bears his name and the dean of the Yale School of Architecture, to design a visitor's center that would not draw attention away from the house.
The Education and Visitors Center was built adjacent to Twain's Carriage House. The center is a $16.3 million, facility that will house artifacts from the museum's collection that cannot now be shown in the house itself. It contains a lecture hall and classroom facilities. The house will receive $1 million from the state government to meet expenses related to the construction of the museum and restoration of the house. Since the museum opened in November 2003, attendance has increased by 15%.
The house generates $5 million in tourism from 50,000 visitors. The Aetna foundation gave $500,000 to the campaign. The National Endowment for the Humanities gave $800,000 in challenge grants for teacher development programs, a student writing contest, and an educational website.
Since the building of the Visitors Center in 2003, the house has become financially unsustainable and has launched a campaign to raise awareness and funds. In response, the state government, the governor, energy company United Technologies, and many others have all contributed.
This green museum was the first in America to receive a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification.
External links
- The Mark Twain House admits its woes in the Hartford Advocate
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