This article was written by Natalie Rothstein
He was a young 30-year-old professor about to start his teaching career at Harvard. So it was that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow knocked at the door of 105 Brattle Street in Cambridge, MA to see the widow Craigie about a room to rent. The year was 1837. Longfellow became a boarder in the house that he would eventually own and where he would live for the rest of his life, until his death in 1882 at age 75.
Today, of course, hardly anyone refers to the stately Georgian mansion by any other appellation than that of The Longfellow House. But it did have an honored history before the beloved poet lived there. Built in 1759 by John Vassall, the house, in its earliest days, was most famously known as the headquarters for George Washington during the American Revolution. Washington lived there for ten months during 1775-6, during which time he and his wife, Martha, celebrated their 17th wedding anniversary.
Longfellow took great pride in the fact that his home was a former residence of the nation's founding father. He bought a bust of Washington which he placed in the entrance hall and it remains there today. Longfellow delighted in the knowledge that his own study with its book-lined shelves had served as Washington's office when the general was planning the Siege of Boston.
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