EXPLORING RESIDENCES OF ICONIC AMERICAN AUTHORS, PLAYWRIGHTS AND POETS©

 

I recently ran across a wonderful article in an online travel magazine which showcased former residences of a number of famous American authors.  This inspired me to explore the topic further myself during this Holiday Season by creating a list of my own, which also inevitably resulted in my including a couple of authors' residences mentioned in the above-referenced article -- as we bid a "not-so-fond adieu" to 2020.

Some of these residences have been turned into museums, designated as local historical landmarks, placed on the National Register of Historic Places, and are open to visitors.

Herein below is my "short list" --  by no means all-inclusive -- of a few of my own favourite 19th and 20th Century American authors, playwrights and poets, starting with Nobel Prize winner, Pulitzer Prize recipient and champion of the "common man", John Steinbeck.

JOHN STEINBECK (1902-1968)

            Steinbeck, whose book The Grapes of Wrath published in 1939, along with the stark, unforgiving photographs of Dorothea Lange, brought to America's attention, and to the attention of then-US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the dire plight of displaced farmers from the American Midwest during the Great Depression which was exacerbated by the Dust Bowl of the 1930s and which drove many of them to the West Coast, particularly California, seeking a new life.

            John Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California in 1902.  His birthplace and boyhood home still stands.  It is a Queen Anne style Victorian house built in 1897 that the Steinbeck family purchased in 1900 and where they raised their children.  It was subsequently purchased in 1973 by The Valley Guild, eight enthusiastic women who shared a common interest in gourmet cooking and who wanted to showcase Salinas Valley produce.  The Valley Guild renovated and restored the house after purchasing it,  and opened the Steinbeck house to the public as a restaurant on February 27, 1974 —the 72nd anniversary of John Steinbeck’s birth. The residence is located two blocks west of the National Steinbeck Center at 132 Central Avenue in Salinas. which is a "museum of his books".  

John Steinbeck Birth Home in Salinas, California
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            It was not in his boyhood home, however, but in his final residence in Sag Harbor, New York, that Steinbeck lived from 1955 until his death in 1968.  While living there, he wrote several of his best- known novels in a small structure located on the property known as his "writing house",  including East of Eden, Zapata, The Winter of Our Discontent, and, of course, Travels with Charley. 

Steinbeck Home in Sag Harbor
Photo Credit: NY Times, circa 2010

            

Steinbeck's "Writing House" in Sag Harbor
Wikimedia Commons
Photo Credit: ©MTmoney, circa 2013

            It was from and back to his home in Sag Harbor that Steinbeck's 11-month, 10,000-mile journey across the USA with his standard poodle Charley took place in 1960 -- providing the inspiration for his book, Travels with Charley, published in 1962. 

TENNESSEE WILLIAMS (1911-1983)

            Tennessee Williams, born Thomas Lanier Williams in Columbus, Mississippi in 1911, was a prolific 20th Century writer, primarily of stage plays primarily set in the US South, such as "The Glass Menagerie", " The Rose Tattoo", "A Streetcar Named Desire", and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" -- the latter two for which he earned Pulitzer prizes -- and all of which were made into films.  He also wrote two novels, a novella, numerous short stories and his autobiography. 

             From the late 1940s into the 1950s, as Williams' writings were receiving increased public recognition and accolades, he leased the first floor of a multi-story townhouse on East 58th Street in New York City's Manhattan district from Buffie Johnson, a well-known 20th Century painter.  While living there, Williams won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for his play "A Streetcar Named Desire", received a Tony Award in 1950 for his play "The Rose Tattoo", and completed his play "Summer and Smoke". 

Tennessee Williams residence/Buffie Johnson House
Photo Credit:  NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project, ©2017

            Williams shared this residence with his long-term partner Frank Merlo who hired an interior decorator to turn their residence into a style to which Williams referred as "Victorian chic". 

LOUISA MAY ALCOTT (1832-1888)

            One of the most beloved books for many young girls is Little Women, written by Louisa May Alcott.  In 1857, Alcott's father, Amos Bronson Alcott, paid $945. for 12 acres of land in Concord, Massachusetts with a existing manor house that had been on the property since the 1660s.   

            The grounds surrounding the house contained an orchard of 40 apple trees which greatly appealed to Amos Alcott -- so much so that he named his home "Orchard House."   After having moved more than twenty times during the previous thirty years, the Alcotts had finally found a place where they could set down roots.  The family resided at Orchard House for the next 20 years, until 1877. 

Alcott Family Home known as "Orchard House"
Photo Source:  Louisa May Alcott's Orchard House
Photo provenance unknown.

            The manor house is most noted for being the place where, in 1868, Louisa May Alcott wrote, and set, her beloved classic, Little Women -- sitting at a half-moon shaped "shelf desk" that her father built especially for her.  During the American Civil War, however, it was also a "stop" on the Underground Railroad for slaves escaping from Southern pro-slavery states.  

            There have been no major structural changes in Orchard House since the Alcott family lived there;  and almost all of the furniture and personal items regularly on display belonged to them, which makes a walk through the house like stepping back in time.  In Louisa May Alcott's bedroom is the sewing kit which she had with her while she was a nurse taking care of injured soldiers following the famous Battle of Fredericksburg in 1862.

Louisa May Alcott's Bedchamber with built-in writing shelf
Photo Source:  Louisa May Alcott's Orchard House
Photo credit:  Trey Powers

            Little Women is based upon Alcott's own family and personal experiences during the harsh years of the American Civil War in the 1860s.  The book's timeless humanity is one of the reasons it has endured in popularity well into modern times, continuing to enchant and engage each new generation of readers. 

LANGSTON HUGHES (1901-1967)

            African-American poet and writer Langston Hughes is considered one of the foremost figures of the Harlem Renaissance.  Hughes lived and worked on the top floor of a "rowhouse" on East 127th Street from 1947 to 1967, the last 20 years of his life. The building, built in 1869, was owned by Emerson and Ethel Harper, a couple Hughes had met in the 1930s whom he considered his adopted uncle and aunt.

Harlem Rowhouse occupied by Langston Hughes
Photo credit:  Christopher D. Brazee
NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project, 2016.

 

            Hughes' lifelong fascination with Harlem is evident in much of his writing, which often features the neighborhood and the people he encountered there.  He referred to Harlem as "the greatest Negro city in the world".    He, in turn, would come to be referred to as the “Poet Laureate of Harlem".

            Already an accomplished writer before moving into this rowhouse, Hughes continued to write many important works while living there that explored Black life and culture.  Some of these works include poetry collections such as Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951) and The Panther and the Lash (1967); the Jesse B. Semple book series based on the "everyday person" in Harlem; Hughes' second autobiography I Wonder as I Wander (1956); and children’s books such as The First Book of Jazz (1954) and The First Book of Africa (1960).

Interior of Hughes' Harlem Apartment, circa 2017
Photo provenance and credit unknown.

            In recognition of Hughes’ significance to New York City and American history, this Harlem building was designated a New York City Landmark in 1981, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982, and the block of East 127th Street on which he lived has been named “Langston Hughes Place” in his honor.

                       

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Herein below are some other iconic and famous American writers of the 19th and 20th Centuries whose residences were mentioned in the article that I previously referenced:

EMILY DICKINSON (1830-1886)

            Emily Dickinson penned nearly all of her 1,800 poems in her modest room on the second floor of the Dickinson family home in Amherst, Massachusetts, known as "The Homestead", where she was born in 1830 and spent her entire life.  

Dickinson Family Home "The Homestead"
Photo source: Wikipedia Commons
Photo provenance and credit unknown.

            Now part of the Emily Dickinson Museum, which also includes the frozen-in-time next-door residence of the poet’s brother Austin and his family, The Homestead has been carefully restored to look as it did when Dickinson herself resided there -- from the pale yellow exterior to the floral wallpaper in her bedroom. 

            The room in which Dickinson did her writing contains one of the poet’s plain white dresses which has a pocket for holding a pencil and scraps of paper.  A replica of her tiny square writing desk faces a window overlooking Main Street. 

Emily Dickinson's bedroom/writing room
Photo credit: Emily Dickinson Museum

            Dickinson's most prolific creative years were between 1855-1865.  Amazingly, none of Dickinson's 1,800 poems penned during her lifetime were published until after her death in 1886.

            After publication near the end of the 19th Century, however, and commencing in the 20th Century, her poetry has since been included in the curricula of courses in American literature and poetry for students from Middle School through College, her poetry is frequently used as text by well-known musical composers, schools and educational journals have been established in her name, and she has come to be considered an enduring and formidable figure in American culture.

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD (1896-1940) 

AND ZELDA FITZGERALD (1900-1948)

            F. Scott Fitzgerald first met the teenaged Zelda Sayer at a country club dance in 1918 hosted by members of Montgomery, Alabama "society" during World War I, while Fitzgerald was stationed at Camp Sheridan, the nearby army training base. After they married in 1920, the Fitzgeralds lived in New York City and Paris, where they became the "IT" couple, epitomizing the flamboyant and frivolously carefree "Jazz Age" of the 1920s.

            By 1930, however, Zelda's psychological issues had become increasingly apparent, and she was diagnosed as being schizophrenic. The first of what would become frequent periodic sanatorium stays over her lifetime initially began that year in Paris, followed thereafter by a sanatorium stay in Geneva, Switzerland.

            In 1931, the Fitzgeralds returned to Zelda's hometown of Montgomery, Alabama, briefly living in a house where both writers were highly productive.

F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Residence in Montgomery, AL
Currently the F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum
Photo credit: The Fitzgerald Museum

            The Fitzgeralds lived in this house from 1931 until 1932, each of them writing portions of their respective novels, Save Me The Waltz (1932) by Zelda, and Tender Is The Night (1934) by Scott -- the latter which foreshadowed the decade -- the 1930s -- which would be the most destructive and disappointing for the couple, both personally and professionally.

Interior, Fitzgerald House and Museum
Photo credit: F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum

            Built in 1909, the house in Montgomery is the only former residence of the Fitzgeralds still extant, and currently is the location of the F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum -- the only museum in the world dedicated to the lives and legacies of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.

(Supplemental sources: Blog Article by Paige Grande in Literary Traveler, April 1. 2005; Blog Article by Sarah Sargent, NY LGBT Historic Sites Project, circa 2017; Blog Article, author unknown, in NY LGBT Historic Sites Project, circa 2017; Louisa May Alcott's Orchard House; Blog Article by Zac Thompson in Frommer's, circa 2020; The Emily Dickinson Museum; The F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum.)

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