Visit The Homes of American Literary Pioneers in Concord, MA
Orchard House, at 399 Lexington Rd., is where Louisa May Alcott wrote her classic novel, Little Women, inspired by her own growing up in Concord with her sisters. Guides in period dress take visitors through rooms of original furniture and personal possessions.
The Wayside, at 455 Lexington Rd. was named by Nathaniel Hawthorne, who lived here in the 1850s and 60s, but in the 1840s it had been home to a teenage Louisa May Alcott, and another author, Harriet Lothrop (pen name Margaret Sidney), would live here later in the 1800s. (Open seasonally).
Ralph Waldo Emerson House at 28 Cambridge Turnpike is preserved by his family and contains Emerson’s original furniture and objects, much as he left it. (Open seasonally)
The Old Manse, at 269 Monument St., was built by Ralph Waldo Emerson’s grandparents, and you can take a tour to the room where Emerson himself wrote his first book, Nature. Years later, in the same room, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote the story that gave the house its name: Mosses from an Old Manse.
