Construction and Early History
Construction of the oldest portions of the house known as Arrowhead took place in the 1780s. Built by Captain David Bush, the wood frame and clapboard house was apparently used as an inn. The Bush family sold the property Pittsfield Doctor John Brewster in 1844, and he eventually sold the property to Herman Melville, which then included 160 acres (65 ha) of farmland. The house at that time consisted of a simple rectangular structure with five window bays across and two deep, with a large central chimney. There is some evidence that the house may originally have had three stories, but at the time of the Melville purchase in 1850 it only had 2 1/2.
Read more about this topic: Arrowhead (Herman Melville House)
Famous quotes containing the words construction, early and/or history:
“There’s no art
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He was a gentleman on whom I built
An absolute trust.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“[My early stories] are the work of a living writer whom I know in a sense, but can never meet.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)
“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)