Nook Farm was a writers' colony before anyone used the phrase: Harriet Beecher Stowe next door, journalists and abolitionists on the same lawn, no fences between the properties.
The house itself is a 25-room High Victorian Gothic pile with a wraparound porch shaped like a steamboat deck. Twain worked on the third floor, in the billiard room, at a desk pushed against the wall so the table would still be usable.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, A Connecticut Yankee and The Prince and the Pauper all came out of that one room. He lost the house to debt in 1891 and never lived in it again.
Memories attached to this place
“Stowe lived across the grass. The two households borrowed everything but opinions.”
“The porch was built to look like the deck of a riverboat. He never said so out loud, but everyone saw it.”
“My great-grandmother cleaned the third floor and said the smoke never came out of the drapes.”
Timeline
- 1871The family moves to Hartford and rents in Nook Farm.
- 1874House completed; the third floor becomes the workroom.
- 1881Interiors redecorated by Louis Comfort Tiffany's firm.
- 1891Financial collapse forces the family to Europe.
- 1929Saved from demolition by a citizens' committee.
The workroom, not the parlor, is where the value of a house actually accumulates.
