WADSWORTH-LONGFELLOW HOUSE
Courtesy of Maine Historical Society
489 Congress Street
Portland, ME 04101
Phone: 207-774-1822
www.hwlongfellow.org
“The lamps are lit, the fires burn bright. The house is full of life and light.”
— HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) lived in this house for thirty-five years. He was born in his aunt’s house nearby, and when he was eight months old his family moved here. Longfellow is best known and loved for his poems, among them “Evangeline,” “The Song of Hiawatha,” and “Paul Revere’s Ride.” But he was more than a poet. He was an educator, having taught at his alma mater, Bowdoin College, and at Harvard College (see page 69). He was also a novelist, essayist, and translator.
This house was lived in by four generations of the Wadsworth-Longfellow family. Revolutionary War General Peleg Wadsworth (1748–1829) built it in 1785. At first it was a two-story dwelling with a gambrel roof. When the general retired to the country, his daughter Zilpah, her husband Stephen Longfellow IV, and their children continued to live here. Following an 1814 house fire, the renovations included the addition of a third story. The last family member to live here was Anne Longfellow Pierce. When she died in 1901 she left the house and all its contents to the Maine Historical Society.
The Wadsworth-Longfellow House has the distinction of being the first brick house in Portland, the oldest existing structure on the Portland peninsula, and Maine’s first house museum. Tours of the house encompass the front hall, the parlor, the parlor chamber, the sitting room, the sitting room chamber, the summer dining room, the kitchen, the kitchen chamber, and Annie’s chamber. When the family lived here, there were vegetable gardens and fruit trees. Today there is a flower garden, which was created in 1924 and replanted in 2007.