Mark Twain House

Room where Twain wrote Mark Twain first came to Hartford in 1868 while writing The Innocents Abroad in order to work with publisher Elisha Bliss, Jr. of the American Publishing Company. Hartford was a publishing center at the time, with twelve publishers. He moved into a substantial home in Buffalo, New York after marrying Olivia Langdon; however, he considered moving to a more opulent house in Hartford within two years, partly to be closer to his publisher. The family first rented a house at what was called Nook Farm in 1871 before buying land there and building a new house. ==Architecture and construction==

The house was designed by Edward Tuckerman Potter, an architect from New York City. When it was being built, the Hartford Daily Times noted, "The novelty displayed in the architecture of the building, the oddity of its internal arrangement and the fame of its owner will all conspire to make it a house of note for a long time to come." According to A Field Guide to American Houses the house was built in the Stick style of Victorian architecture. In 1881, an adjoining strip of land was purchased, the grounds re-landscaped, and the home was renovated. The driveway was redrawn, the kitchen rebuilt and its size doubled, and the front hall was enlarged. The family also installed new plumbing and heating and a burglar alarm. After its renovations, the total cost of the home amounted to $70,000, $22,000 were spent on furnishings, and the initial purchase of land cost $31,000. ==Life in the house==

The Clemens family moved into the home in 1874 after its completion. The children had their own area with a nursery and a playroom/classroom. Mrs. Clemens tutored her daughters in the large school room on the second floor. Clemens played with his children in the conservatory, pretending to be an elephant in an imaginary safari. He noted that the house "was of us, and we were in its confidence and lived in its grace and in the peace of its benediction." Clemens enjoyed living in the house, partly because he knew many different authors from his Hartford neighborhood, such as Harriet Beecher Stowe who lived next door and Isabella Beecher Hooker. He also hosted several authors as guests, including Thomas Bailey Aldrich, George Washington Cable, and William Dean Howells, as well as actors Henry Irving, Lawrence Barrett, and Edwin Booth. Clemens worked on many of his most notable books in this home, including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Life on the Mississippi (1883). The success of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer inspired him to renovate the house, and he had Louis Comfort Tiffany supervise the interior decoration in 1881. He also was fascinated with new technologies, leading to the installation of an early telephone. Clemens invested heavily in the typesetting machine invented by James W. Paige. Its first publication was Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1884. The company went bankrupt in 1894, leaving Twain with a large amount of debt; == Post-Twain ==

Katharine Seymour Day was a grand-niece of Harriet Beecher Stowe who had known the Clemens family, and she saved the Twain House from destruction in 1929. She founded the Friends of Hartford organization, which raised $100,000 to secure a mortgage on the home through a two-year capital campaign. It was carefully restored between 1955 and 1974. It took many decades to pay off the mortgage and raise money to restore the deteriorating property, as well as to retrieve artifacts, furnishings, and personal possessions. The entire process finally ended in 1974, just in time for the 100th anniversary of the house. Admission to the Mark Twain House is by guided tour only; tours are organized around various themes. The House and Museum offer a wide variety of events, in addition to tours, such as lectures, writers' workshops, and family events. Renovation The house underwent a major renovation starting in 1999, including work on the exterior wood, tile, and terra cotta brick, and rebuilding the purple slate roofs. Restoration and preservation brought the house and grounds back to the state that they were in between 1881 and 1891, when the Clemenses most loved the house. The marble floor in the front hallway underwent a historic restoration, and specialists re-stenciled and painted the walls and ceilings and refinished the woodwork to recover the Tiffany-decorated interiors. Restoration was funded in part by two federal Save America’s Treasures grants totaling $3 million. Scanning computers were also used in the restoration. In 2016, the Mahogany Suite underwent a complete restoration effort that included the restoration of the architectural woodwork and plaster, and the reinstatement of the historic wallcoverings. The home today contains 50,000 artifacts: manuscripts, historic photographs, family furnishings, and Tiffany glass. Many of the original furnishings remain at the house, including the Clemens' ornate Venetian bed, an intricately carved mantel from a Scottish Castle and a billiard table. Financial problems The number of admissions leveled off at around 53,000, and the house's trustees decided that they must expand or be forced to shrink their operations. They commissioned Robert A. M. Stern to design a visitor center that would not draw attention away from the house. The center is a $16.3 million, facility that houses artifacts from the museum's collection that are not shown in the house itself. It contains a lecture hall and classroom facilities. In 2000, the house was generating $5 million in tourism from 50,000 visitors. The Aetna foundation gave $500,000 to the campaign. The National Endowment for the Humanities gave $800,000 in challenge grants for teacher development programs, a student writing contest, and an educational website. After building the Visitors Center in 2003, the house became financially unsustainable and launched a campaign to raise awareness and funds. In response, the state government, the governor, United Technologies, and many others contributed. As of 2011, officials of the museum said that it had recovered financially. In 2011, staff writer Steve Courtney published a book detailing the house's history and renovations. It includes a foreword by Hal Holbrook, a trustee of the house. ==Gallery==

File:MARK_TWAIN_HOUSE.jpg|From the west, 1970 File:Twain House Porte cochere HABS CONN,2-HARF,16-22.jpg|From the northeast, with the Mark Twain carriage house in the background, 1995 File:Twain House North Elevation HABS CONN,2-HARF,16-18.jpg|From the north, 1995 File:Twain_House_South_and_East_HABS_CONN,2-HARF,16-14.jpg|From the south, 1995 File:MarkTwainHartford2.jpg|From the southeast, 2004 File:Mark Twain House and Museum 2007.jpg|From the east, 2007 ==See also==