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)
“I am the scroll of the poet behind which samurai swords are being sharpened.”
—Lester Cole, U.S. screenwriter, Nathaniel Curtis, and Frank Lloyd. Prince Tatsugi (Frank Puglia)
“I don’t know much about death and the sorriest lesson I’ve learned is that words, my most trusted guardians against chaos, offer small comfort in the face of anyone’s dying.”
—Alison Hawthorne Deming (b. 1946)
“In most nineteenth-century cities, both large and small, more than 50 percent—and often up to 75 percent—of the residents in any given year were no longer there ten years later. People born in the twentieth century are much more likely to live near their birthplace than were people born in the nineteenth century.”
—Stephanie Coontz (20th century)