Mark Twain House

The Mark Twain House & Museum is located in Hartford, Connecticut. His boyhood home in Hannibal, Missouri, is also a museum, The Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum.

Mark Twain House

To explore this historic house that Mark Twain built for his family you need to understand the man and how certain events in his life shaped the destiny of the house.

In 1963, the house was declared a National Historic Landmark, thanks to the efforts of The Friends of Hartford. This organization, founded in 1927, created the Mark Twain Memorial and Library Commission to raise money for buying the house scheduled for demolition in 1929. Restoration began in 1955.

The Twain home was located in the Nook Farm community, a 140-acre neighborhood that was The Hamptons of its time. Influential publishers, authors, journalists, spiritualists, feminists, and painters resided in Nook Farm. Twain's next-door neighbor was author Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Some well-known residents:

• Charles Dudley Warner (newspaper publisher)
• Joseph Hawley (Connecticut Governor and a Civil War General
• Isabella Beecher Hooker (Feminist activist, Harriet's sister)
• William Gillette (Actor and Playwright)

In 1871, Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) began building the new home for his beloved, Livy (Olivia). It took three years and cost $40,000, which is almost $1 million in today's economy.

The Twains' house is a Victorian Gothic design and considered the best example of the American Aesthetic Movement. The three-story home was on the cutting edge of design complete with the latest technology, including a burglar alarm.

Mark Twain loved technology and installed the latest technological wonders. The heating was a gravity flow system. Every bathroom had a flush toilet. Split flues were utilized in the fireplaces to accommodate windows above the mantels. Twain was one of the first to have a home telephone.

The majestic Victorian house was the creation of renowned architect, Edward Tuckerman Potter. The house boasts traditional gables, turrets, bay windows, and sweeping porches. The brick exterior was painted with bright Victorian colors. Other unique features included flower, butterfly and even squirrel cutouts. Twain's home was considered whimsical since it resembled one of the steam riverboats that plied up and down the Mississippi River.

Louis Comfort Tiffany, renowned, stained glass, window designer and the Associated Artists created the interior with carved woodwork, marble herringbone-patterned foyer and stenciled walls. This stunning interior blended many styles and cultures using colors, textures and contrasting patterns from Eastern and African design elements.

The original plans for the home had designated rooms.

First Floor:

• Conservatory
• Library
• Dining Room
• Drawing Room
• Entrance Hall and Formal Reception Room
• Guest Room
• Guest Bathroom and Dressing Room
• Kitchen with Pantry, Servant's Hall and Service Entry

Second Floor:

• School Room
• Bathroom
• Guest Room
• 3 Bedrooms
• 2 Bathooms

Third Floor:

• Billiard Room/Twain's Study
• Guest Room
• Servant's Room

Mark Twain's study was located on the third floor. It was a combination of billiard room and workspace. This was strictly male territory and it's said that the only women allowed access were the cleaning maids. Twain's male friends, however, were always welcomed guests to play a game of pool, drink a bit of liquor, smoke cigars, and swap stories.

This room was more than just a writer's study; it has great historic value because it's where Mark Twain wrote the books that became classic American literature.

• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
• A Tramp Abroad
• Huckleberry Finn
• Life on the Mississippi
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
• The Gilded Age
• The Prince and the Pauper

In 1881, the Twains purchased adjoining property and decided to redesign the yard and renovate the house. The kitchen doubled in size. Other changes included a larger foyer, new plumbing, a new heating system, and a burglar alarm system.

The larger kitchen accommodated many new features.

• Back Pantry
• Butler's Pantry
• Dumbwaite
• Passthroughs
• Scullery
• Servant's Hall to Dining Room
• Speaking Tubes (intercom system)

Twain's publishing house was a financial disaster with failed ill-conceived biographies. Other investments in new technology were unsuccessful, including the doomed Paige Compositor, a typesetting machine quickly outpaced by the lithograph. In 1891, Twain was forced to move his wife and youngest daughter, Clara, to Europe so he could conduct a world lecture tour to pay-off debts and rebuild finances. Henry Rogers (Standard Oil) befriended Twain and became his financial advisor, saving him from complete financial ruin.

During Twain's lecture tour, his other two daughters, Susy and Jean stayed in America. In 1892, Susy, at age twenty-four, died from spinal meningitis in the family Nook farm home. In 1903, the Twains sold the home and a year later Livy died.

Mark Twain's home survived as a school, an apartment complex and even the Hartford Public Library. The house underwent painstaking restorations in 1970 in an effort to turn it into a museum. Amazingly, some of the Twains' original furnishings have been repurchased over the years and once more grace the home as well as one of the original Paige Compositor machines.

The museum boasts some 50,000 Mark Twain artifacts on display. Two of the most prized pieces of furniture are the Twains' Venetian bed and the original billiard table. The restoration was completed in 1974 and touted as setting off a wave of similar projects across America. The Museum was built adjacent to the Carriage House and opened in 2003.

While you can visit The Mark Twain House & Museum online and find photos, especially those taken of the original house, the photos can't be enlarged to provide greater detail.

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