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Construction delays and the ever-increasing costs of building their dream home frustrated Sam. For more information, or to join or renew as a library member, please email The Library Membership application may be found here. In 1871, Isabella organized the annual convention of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association in Washington D.C. And presented her argument before the Committee on the Judiciary of the United States Senate. Her husband, John Hooker, believed in his wife and supported her activities. He helped Isabella draft a bill to the Connecticut Legislature giving married women the same property rights as their husbands.
Museum Members
The office is also a billiards room, where Twain would host guests and take breaks from writing by shooting pool. Large windows let the western light shine in, and a balcony provided the perfect place for Twain to step outside. A red velvet rope keeps us from going all the way into the room, but across the way, we can see the desk. It’s still set with pencils and paper; there are books and an ashtray as if he’d just stepped away.
General House Tour
Twain went to work every day on the third floor of his home from 9 a.m. He wrote creatively with children running around, his wife nearby, and a dozen staff. Samuel L. Clemens, aka Mark Twain, was born in 1835 in Hannibal, Missouri when Halley’s Comet soared by overhead. Twain, though nearly as well traveled as the comet, spent much of his life in Hartford where his cherished Gothic Victorian house is open for tours. If you’re a fan of ornate Gothic architecture or American writing, visiting the home is worth a trip.
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Library - Mark Twain House
After a few minutes, my eyes adjust, and I can see the intricate stenciling on the mahogany wood has intricate patterns. We crane our heads back to see the entirety of a grand dark wood staircase that winds upward. Our guide tells us about the family as he takes us through an ornate drawing room, a massive library, a botanical room, bedrooms, bathrooms, and up three flights of stairs. A short walk past the massive carriage house, which is not on tour, we’re at the side of the massive gothic Victorian. Access to the Mark Twain House is by guided tours only and groups queue up on the porch, one after the other, all day long. I headed for Hartford, Connecticut, to see the house while on a two-year road trip as a nomad, traveling in my van, hiking, visiting historic sites, and staying in short-term rentals.
Books
The interior of the home had rooms for his wife and all of his children, and a number of rooms devoted to luxury space. The interior was designed with input from Twain and featured an idiosyncratic layout. It is even rumored that the house was built to resemble a riverboat, although this is not readily apparent. Recently named one of the Ten Best Historic Homes in the World by National Geographic, the house features interior decor designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany, including elaborate stenciling and carved woodwork. Visit the Billiard Room where Twain did his writing and see the bed carved with angels where he slept.
Farmington AvenueHartford, CT 06105
Construction began in August 1873, and the family traveled to Europe during that time, where Olivia purchased many furnishings for the home. Finished in 1874, the Mark Twain House & Museum was built by the author to serve as a home for he and his wife, but financial troubles and the death of one of their children eventually made the house unlivable. You can learn a lot about people by the way they treat their animals and employees. One look at the Carriage House near the Mark Twain House tells you how caring the Clemens family was.
The former home of Samuel Clemens and family remembers the happiest period of the author's life.
The writer stayed with John and Isabella Hooker, whom he had recently met in Brooklyn, New York, along with Beecher siblings, Harriet, Catharine, and Henry Ward, then a nationally regarded preacher. In a subsequent visit, he met the Reverend Joseph Hopkins Twichell, minister of the Asylum Hill Congregational Church, who was to become, perhaps, Twain’s closest friend. Stowe’s signature work had been written while the family lived in Brunswick, Maine–her husband, the Reverend Calvin Stowe, taught at Bowdoin College there. Built almost like a French-Swiss chalet, the Carriage House has architectural detailing like the main house.
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Brick Details - Mark Twain House
But Isabella remained undaunted by their, or anyone else’s, opposition. Guides are careful to point out the mass of work he did in the summer in Elmira, in the private hilltop study his sister-in-law Susan Crane built for him there; a picture of the study is on the wall as a visual aid. He stuffed manuscripts into a pigeonhole shelf to be picked up again, perhaps years afterward.
Join us from late November to January when the house is decorated for a Victorian holiday. Allow two hours for tour of the house and a visit to the museum center. Today the house has been marked a national landmark and has been restored to the opulent condition it was in when inhabited by Twain and his family. A museum was added during renovations and now visitors can not only learn about the author, but step right into his shoes. Twain had the Neo-Gothic mansion built in 1873, near the height of his literary fame and wealth. The large estate house featured intricate detailing across the exterior including gabled roofs and picketed red spokes across the spacious porch.
For architect Edward Tuckerman Potter, multi-colored hexagonal slate afforded another opportunity to texturize and colorize the house he was designing for Samuel Clemens. Today, the billiard room might be called Mark Twain's "home office" or maybe even a "man cave," as the third floor was at a level separate from the rest of the house. The billiard room was often filled with as much cigar smoke as the writer and his guests could tolerate. Fashionable Victorian homes often included a conservatory, or small greenhouse. At the Mark Twain House, the conservatory is a round structure with glass walls and roof. "Glass Houses," like the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens in Pittsburgh, were very popular in America's Victorian era.
Twain’s 20 years in Hartford–he and his wife raised three daughters here–were happy ones and gave fruit to many of his best-known books. These included The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Life on the Mississippi (1883), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889), and what many believe to be the greatest American novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). House tours and museum admission are available seven days a week April through December, and six days a week (closed on Tuesdays) January through March.See below for a brief description. After losing a great deal of his money by investing in a shoddy printing press, Twain and his family were forced to move to Europe in 1891. Later on when Twain’s fortunes once again turned, one of his daughters passed away.
When Twain and Stowe lived in Hartford, the area would have a wooded wonderland with a small but booming downtown and a thriving literary community. Today, the road out front is busy, but back then, atop the hill it sits on, Twain would have seen a vast expanse of New England Forest and trees. Now, the space between Twain’s home and downtown is filled with homes, businesses and apartments. Clemens hired New York architect Edward Tuckerman Potter to design the family residence. Both Samuel and Olivia Clemens were intimately involved in the design process.
There are 50,000 artifacts, including manuscripts, historic photographs, family furnishings and Tiffany glass inside. Unfortunately, they don’t allow interior photography, so the only way to see it is to take a tour. SAH Archipedia tells the story of the United States through its buildings, landscapes, and cities.
Samuel Clemens and his wife Olivia Langdon asked the noted architect Edward Tuckerman Potter to design a lavish "poet's house" on Nook Farm, a pastoral neighborhood in Hartford, Connecticut. The family spent a total of 17 lively years in the house, and it’s where Clemens wrote some of his best-loved works. For Passengers with Limited MobilityFollow the above directions, but continue east on Farmington Avenue and go past the Mark Twain House. Take your first right onto Forest Street and look for the sign on the right for the entrance to the Museum Center’s rear parking lot at 65 Forest Street. Their other two daughters, Susy and Jean, had stayed behind during this time, and Susy died at home on August 18, 1896, of spinal meningitis before the family could be reunited. They could not bring themselves to reside in the house after this tragedy and spent most of their remaining years living abroad.
It displayed the latest in modern innovations when it was built in 1874. The couple spent $40‚000 to $45‚000 building their new home‚ so once they moved in they kept the interior simple. Mark Twain and his family enjoyed what the author would later call the happiest and most productive years of his life in their Hartford home. Upon entering the foyer, my first impression was that the house was that it’s dark and busy.
In the early 1850s, brothers-in-law John Hooker and Francis Gillette purchased 140 wooded acres just west of Hartford’s last trolley stop on a bend, or nook, of the winding Park River. The men built their homes and parceled out land to family members and friends. In 2003, the Webster Bank Museum Center at the Mark Twain House and Museum opened.
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