Nathaniel Hawthorne Birthplace

The Nathaniel Hawthorne Birthplace is the birthplace of American author Nathaniel Hawthorne. It is located at 27 Hardy Street but accessible through 54 Turner Street, Salem, Massachusetts. The house is now a nonprofit museum along with the House of the Seven Gables immediately adjacent; an admission fee is charged.

The house was built sometime between 1730–1745, and located at 27 Union Street until moved to its current location in 1958. According to architectural historian Abbott Lowell Cummings, the house was probably built for Benjamin Pickman on land deeded him by his father-in-law Joseph Hardy, and may have recycled structural timbers from a 17th century Pickman house that earlier stood on its site. It reflects typical architecture for the period: a central chimney, gambrel roof, front and back stairways, and a post-and-lintel doorway. The ground floor is laid out with kitchen to the right and main room to the left. The second floor has front and back rooms on each side.

Hawthorne's grandfather purchased the building in 1772. Hawthorne was born in the house on July 4, 1804, and lived in the house until age 4. Most of the interior has been preserved intact.

Famous quotes containing the words nathaniel hawthorne, nathaniel, hawthorne and/or birthplace:

    There is the grand truth about Nathaniel Hawthorne. He says NO! in thunder; but the Devil himself cannot make him say yes. For all men who say yes, lie; and all men who say no,—why, they are in the happy condition of judicious, unincumbered travellers in Europe; they cross the frontiers into Eternity with nothing but a carpet-bag,—that is to say, the Ego. Whereas those yes-gentry, they travel with heaps of baggage, and, damn them! they will never get through the Custom House.
    Herman Melville (1819–1891)

    There is the grand truth about Nathaniel Hawthorne. He says NO! in thunder; but the Devil himself cannot make him say yes. For all men who say yes, lie; and all men who say no,—why, they are in the happy condition of judicious, unincumbered travellers in Europe; they cross the frontiers into Eternity with nothing but a carpet-bag,—that is to say, the Ego. Whereas those yes-gentry, they travel with heaps of baggage, and, damn them! they will never get through the Custom House.
    Herman Melville (1819–1891)

    The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.
    —Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864)

    The settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe. America came into existence when the European was already so distant from the ancient ideas and ways of his birthplace that the whole span of the Atlantic did not widen the gulf.
    Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)