The Purple Mango Post

One of the coolest real estate transactions in literary history is the sale of Hillside, the home of the Alcott family, to Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of the Scarlet Letter and the head of a young family. Louisa May Alcott, her three sisters and her Transcendentalist parents lived for several years in the Hillside, the distinguished, gabled house below, until they sold it to Hawthorne, who renamed it the Wayside. The Alcotts instead moved about 100 yards down the street to a new house on a former apple grove, which they called Orchard House.

My aunt and I toured Orchard House on Monday, which has been lovingly preserved with much of the original furniture and artwork the Alcotts had when they lived there. Fans of Louisa May Alcott's novel Little Women (or of the 1994 movie, one of my all-time favorites) will instantly feel at home. While the events in the book are inspired by memories of the girls' lives at Hillside, Alcott used Orchard House as the inspiration for the March family's home. 

The original Alcotts were more ingenious and progressive than even their fictional counterparts. Patriarch Bronson Alcott built his house so that they would have both indoor water and a constant source of hot water (both rarities in those days, particularly for a family always short on money). They also encouraged their daughters' talents, sacrificing the Victorian tidiness that was all the rage in Europe to the cause of creativity. Artist May (Amy in the book) was allowed to draw on the walls of her bedroom, provided that her pieces become successfully better. Beth's piano still stands in the living room. In Louisa May Alcott's room at Orchard House, you can see the semi-circular writing desk her father built for her between two windows, where she wrote the book that made her - and her family - famous. 

Below, the gabled house is the Wayside; the building in the woods is the adult School of Philosophy Bronson Alcott built behind his home; details from Orchard House, decorated for Christmas; and a bit of Concord wintertime.