The Orchard House Today
Orchard House is open for public tours daily, except for major holidays and between January 1 and 15. An admission fee is charged.
The exterior looks much as it did in the Alcotts' day. Care has been taken to keep extensive structural preservation work invisible. All of the furnishings are original to the mid-nineteenth century, about 75% belonged to the family, and the rooms look very much as they did when the Alcotts were in residence.
The dining room contains family china, portraits of the family members, and paintings by May along with period furnishings. The parlor is decorated with period wallpaper and a patterned reproduction carpet while family portraits and watercolors by May adorn the walls. Abigail May's bread board, mortar and pestle, tin spice chest and wooden bowls are displayed on the hutch table in the kitchen. Other original kitchen features include a laundry drying rack designed by Bronson, and a soapstone sink bought by Louisa. The study is furnished with Bronson's library table, chair and desk. The parent's bedroom contains many of Abigail May's possessions, including photographs, furniture, and hand made quilts.
The Orchard House has continued the tradition of The Concord School of Philosophy by hosting "The Summer Conversational Series" since 1977, and has recently added a "Teacher Institute" component. The Hillside Chapel is also used for youth programs, poetry readings, historical reenactments, and other special events.
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Famous quotes containing the words orchard, house and/or today:
“Some spring the white man came, built him a house, and made a clearing here, letting in the sun, dried up a farm, piled up the old gray stones in fences, cut down the pines around his dwelling, planted orchard seeds brought from the old country, and persuaded the civil apple-tree to blossom next to the wild pine and the juniper, shedding its perfume in the wilderness. Their old stocks still remain.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Our law very often reminds one of those outskirts of cities where you cannot for a long time tell how the streets come to wind about in so capricious and serpent-like a manner. At last it strikes you that they grew up, house by house, on the devious tracks of the old green lanes; and if you follow on to the existing fields, you may often find the change half complete.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“There is no such thing as an ugly language. Today I hear every language as if it were the only one, and when I hear of one that is dying, it overwhelms me as though it were the death of the earth.”
—Elias Canetti (b. 1905)