LOUISA MAY ALCOTT’S ORCHARD HOUSE
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399 Lexington Road
Concord, MA 01702
Phone: 978-369-4118
www.louisamayalcott.org
“Tis a pretty retreat and ours; a family mansion to take pride in . . .”
— AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
When founded in 1635, Concord was the first inland Puritan settlement. Initially known as Musketaquid, the name Concord was later adopted to reflect the peaceful coexistence between the local Indians and the English settlers. Concord is best known for the “shot heard round the world,” the beginning of the American Revolution on April 19, 1775. In the nineteenth century the town became a haven for literati, philosophers, and artists, among them Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and sculptor Daniel Chester French, all of whose houses are featured in this book, and all of whom are buried at the Author’s Ridge in Concord’s Sleepy Hollow Cemetery (34A Bedford Street). Another Concord resident, Ephraim Bull, cultivated the first Concord grapes in 1850.
Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888), novelist and poet, lived here with her family for nineteen years starting in 1858. They first came to Concord in 1840. Three years later her father, Amos Bronson Alcott, moved the family to the town of Harvard, Massachusetts, where he founded Fruitlands (see page 92), a Utopian agrarian community. After the venture failed, the Alcotts returned to Concord two years later and bought Hillside, which was sold to Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1852 (see The Wayside, page 76).
The Alcotts—Bronson, his wife, Abigail May, and their daughters, Anna, Louisa, and May—made this place their home in 1858. There were two houses on the twelve-acre site, both dating to about 1690–1720. There was an orchard of forty apple trees, and so their home came to be named Orchard House. Bronson joined the two houses into one and set about making many improvements. As a friend, Lydia Maria Child (1802–1888), observed, “The result is a house full of queer nooks and corners and all manner of juttings in and out. It seems as if the spirit of some old architect had brought it from the Middle Ages and dropped it down in Concord. . . . The whole house leaves a general impression of harmony, of a medieval sort.”
One of the improvements was the shelf desk Bronson crafted for his daughter Louisa. Here in 1868 she wrote her most beloved novel, Little Women, which is set in Orchard House.
After Mrs. Alcott died in 1877, Louisa, her father, and her sister Anna moved to 255 Main Street in Concord, and in 1884 Orchard House was sold to a family friend, William Torrey Harris.
About three-quarters of the furnishings in Orchard House are Alcott family heirlooms. The rest are true to the period. Visitors tour the dining room, parlor, kitchen, study, and bedrooms. The property includes gardens as well as Mr. Alcott’s Hillside Chapel.