Longfellow National Historic Site
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| Longfellow National Historic Site | |
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| IUCN Category V (Protected Landscape/Seascape) | |
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| Location: | Massachusetts, USA |
| Nearest city: | Cambridge, MA |
| Coordinates: | |
| Area: | 2 acres (8,093 m²) |
| Established: | October 9, 1972 |
| Visitation: | 36,660 (in 2005) |
| Governing body: | National Park Service |
The Longfellow National Historic Site, also known as the Vassall-Craigie-Longfellow House, is a historic site located at 105 Brattle Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts that was for almost fifty years the home of noted American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
[edit] History
The mid-Georgian house was built in 1759 for Royalist John Vassall who made it his summer residence with his wife Elizabeth (Oliver) and children until 1774. On the eve of the American Revolution, they fled Boston. Colonel John Glover and the Marblehead Regiment occupied the house as their temporary barracks in June 1775, followed by General George Washington, Commander-in-Chief of the newly-formed Continental Army, who headquartered and planned the Siege of Boston in the house between July, 1775 and April, 1776.
Nathaniel Tracy, who had made a great fortune as one of the earliest and most successful privateers under Washington, owned the house from 1781-1786, after which he went bankrupt and sold the house to Thomas Russell, a wealthy Boston merchant who in turn occupied it until 1791.
Andrew and Elizabeth Craigie owned the house from 1791-1819. Craigie was the first Apothecary General of the United States, in charge of medical services at the battles of Bunker Hill, Cambridge, Germantown and Valley Forge. Craigie died in 1819, leaving his wife in great debt. Accordingly, Mrs. Craigie took in boarders until her death in 1841.
Longfellow first rented rooms in the house from Mrs. Craigie in 1837. After her death, however, the house passed to Nathan Appleton, who gave the house to Longfellow as a wedding gift when Longfellow married Nathan's daughter, Frances. Longfellow lived in the house, producing many of his most famous poems and translations, over the course of the next four decades. During this time, the house also served as a gathering place for famous artists, writers, politicians and other luminaries attracted to Longfellow's hospitality and fame.
After Longfellow's death in 1882, ownership of the house passed to Longfellow's children. His daughter, Alice Longfellow, commissioned two of America's first female landscape architects, Martha Brookes Hutcheson and Ellen Biddle Shipman, to redesign the formal garden in the Colonial Revival style.
[edit] Preservation
In 1913, the surviving Longfellow children established the Longfellow House Trust to do the following:
1. to preserve the property as a memorial to Longfellow and Washington and
2. to showcase the property as a "prime example of Georgian architecture."
In 1962, the trust successfully lobbied for the house to become a national historic landmark. In 1972, the Trust donated the property to the National Park Service. The Longfellow National Historic Site is established and the house was opened to the public.
A 2/3-scale replica of the house also exists in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and serves as an information center for the Minneapolis Parks System and Grand Rounds Scenic Byway.
[edit] External links
- Longfellow National Historic Site official website
- National Parks Conservation Association
- State of the Parks
Categories: IUCN Category V | 1759 architecture | Houses in Massachusetts | National Historic Sites of the United States | People museums in the United States | Registered Historic Places in Massachusetts | Presidential places | Presidential places related to George Washington | Cambridge, Massachusetts
