A Gilded Age Author’s Connecticut Home - Mark Twain House

House Museum

Jun 17

Mark Twain (aka Sanual Clemens) called the late 19th century the “Gilded Age”. By this, he meant that things in the period were glittery on the surface but corrupt underneath. It was an era of greed and corruption, vulgar displays and scandal-plagued politics.

On a downtown street in Hartford, Connecticut, stands the home that Samuel and Olivia Clemens lived in with their family for 17 years. Samuel wrote some of his best-loved works here in the house on Farmington Avenue.

In 1873, the Clemens engaged New York architect Edward Tuckerman Potter to design their Gothic-style home. The family moved into the house in 1874.

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The magnificent Gothic-Revival, Stick-style house expresses the best of high Victorian.

The south facing facade

Graceful ferns hanging on the porch complements the whimsical and elegant architecture.

Looking at the house rom the Northwest

The east facade of the house

The house contains 25 rooms

The success of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer inspired Clemens to renovate the house, and he asked Louis Comfort Tiffany to supervise the 1881 interior decoration.

The top floor was the billards room and his private study where he would write late into the night and he would entertain male guests with cigars and liquor. Twain said, “There ought to be a room in the house to swear in. It’s dangerous to have to repress an emotion like that.”

The house cost between $40,000 to $45,000 to build.

The house today contains more than 50,000 artifacts, including manuscripts, photographs, furnishings and Tiffany glass.

Clemens enjoyed living in the house, partly because he knew many different authors from his Hartford neighborhood, such as Harriet Beecher Stowe and Isabella Beecher Hooker.

The south facing facade

This is the carriage house, completed in 1874, it had a coachman’s apartment on the second floor.

The Stowe Visitors Center next door

The Stowe Visitor Center building detail

Poor financial investments prompted Clemens, his wife and and middle daughter, Clara, to move to Europe in 1891. This allowed Clemens to tour and lecture, making money to pay off their debts. The other two daughters, Suzy and Jean, stayed behind, and Suzy died in this home of spinal meningitis, before the family was reunited. The family could not stay here after this tragedy, and the house was sold in 1903.

The house then became a boy’s school and then an apartment building before a group saved the house in 1929. Katherine Seymour Day, grand-niece of Harriet Beecher Stowe, founded the Friends of Hartford organization which established the Mark Twain Memorial and Library Commission to restore the house to its original appearance.

The house is located next to the newer Museum building. Unfortunately, they do not allow interior home photography, but they do offer a virtual interior tour here.

What you should know:

Restrooms are available.
One price admission includes parking, the museum and a guided-house tour.
Tickets can be reserved online or bought in person.
You could spend a couple of hours to an entire day in the museum, before or after the house tour.
The museum offers a wide variety of events, in addition to lectures and writer’s workshops; check the website for information.

Location:

385 Farmington Avenue, Hartford, CT. 06105

For more information: Mark Twain House