Mark Twain’s Mansion in Hartford, Connecticut

NOTE: THIS WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AS A “GUESSING GAME” UNDER THE TITLE, “CAN YOU GUESS WHO LIVED HERE?”

Can you guess which famous literary figure lived in this Hartford, Connecticut house from 1874 to 1891? Here are your three clues:

1) He was born in Florida, Missouri, in 1835. Missouri was a slave state at the time, which influenced his work and beliefs as an abolitionist.

2) He worked for a while as a miner in Virginia City, Nevada, but soon realized he was better suited for writing at the town newspaper, The Territorial Enterprise.

3) One of his famous quotes was: “Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.”

It’s Mark Twain (aka Samuel Clemens)! Did you guess?

We took a vacation up East when we were a young couple, and seeing this house was one of the highlights for me. Even though it was closed to tours that day, I brazenly walked around the perimeter, peering through the windows.

We thought it would be funny to take photos of ourselves in front of various impressive historic homes like this one and send it out that year with the message: “Merry Christmas from Our Home to Yours!” Being young and poor apartment dwellers at the time, we assumed it was obvious that we did not live in any of these places and that it was just a joke.

Then my Grandma Hazel called and said she’d been showing off the photo of our fancy new place to everyone at church. She wanted to know why we hadn’t told her sooner that we were moving.

I’m afraid our little townhouse was a big disappointment when she visited later that year.

Mark Twain lived and worked in this 19-room, Tiffany-decorated mansion from 1874 to 1891 (and we did not). It was a highly productive period for him in which he wrote such classics as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.

Interior photos aren’t allowed at the Mark Twain house museum, so it was difficult to find any that weren’t so old they were black and white–or dark and fuzzy because they were taken on the sly. I finally found some to show you after a long afternoon of searching. (I hope you appreciate all I do for you!)

Here’s the downstairs library, which looks surprisingly comfortable and livable, even today:

You can see the conservatory toward the back left of the library. Here it is close up:

Since we were talking about grand staircases in a recent post (Staircases That Would Make Scarlett Swoon), I have to show you the one in Mark Twain’s house, even though the only shot of it I could find was from an old black and white photo:

Here’s the billiards room where Twain did most of his writing, in between late-night rounds of pool (legend has it that he often outlasted all of his friends at the game, but would continue playing on his own until 4 or 5:00 in the morning):

The shade of pink in the billiards room is almost exactly the same as the color in the dining room of the historic mansion I showed you last week (Just Say No: Rooms That Need Rehab). Makes me wonder if it was just a popular color scheme in the late 1800s-early 1900s.

The Mark Twain House Museum gives these details about its architecture on its website:

The house was “an inspired and sophisticated expression of modernity.”

The architect was Edward Tuckerman Potter, who created “a vibrant palette of painted brick reminiscent of William Butterfield’s work in England of the 1860s and traditional chalet designs of the Alsatian region of France.”

No two elevations are alike. The gables, upon close inspection, are each a little different in their decorative treatments.

The commitment to experimentation continues in “the exotic and provocative interiors” designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany and his partners in Associated Artists, setting a new standard for the Gilded Age.

New technologies were also used, including a gravity flow heat system, split flues to allow for windows over two fireplaces, and seven bathrooms with flush toilets.

Twain had the first telephone ever installed in a private residence and was proud of it.

As this tour draws to a close, here’s the view from the front porch:

And finally, a close-up of the chimney. The attention to detail with the brick is amazing:

• For information about guided tours, go to the official Mark Twain House Museum website.
• Most interior photos shown here are courtesy Jackie Craven. To see more, including the dining room and bedrooms, go here.
• Exterior photo courtesy of this site, which has a lot more of them to look at if you’re interested.
• To see the dark and blurry photos taken by a defiant tourist, go here. It contains some interesting information about the interiors.
• To read more famous quotes by Mark Twain, click here.

If You’re Hooked on Historic Houses:

• The Spite House in Virginia (only 7 feet wide!).
• Cobble Court, a manor in Ohio built to look like a French-Norman estate.
• Stokesay Court, the estate used in the Keira Knightley film “Atonement.”
• Coco Chanel’s elegant Parisian apartment at 31 Rue Cambon.
• 1908 Gaslight Mansion in St. Louis

Tagged as: Architecture, author, billiards, books, brick, chimney, Connecticut, conservatory, famous quotes, Guessing Games, historic homes, history, House Tour, humor, library, literature, Mark Twain, Missouri, museum, porch, quizzes, slavery, staircase, Tiffany, writing