Ralph Waldo Emerson House (1828)
The home of Ralph Waldo Emerson, where the philosopher, essayist, and poet lived from 1835 until his death in 1882, is located at 28 Cambridge Turnpike in Concord. The house was built in 1828 by the Coolidge family and was known as the “Coolidge Castle.” Emerson purchased it from John T. Coolidge for $3,500 and moved in just after he married his second wife, Lydia Jackson (called Lidian). Emerson had previously lived in Concord in his family’s home called the Old Manse. Emerson wrote numerous works while living in the house, which he called Bush, and had many famous visitors, including Henry David Thoreau, who lived with the Emersons at different times and built his famous cabin on Emerson’s land at Walden Pond. The house had to be extensively repaired after a fire in 1872. After Emerson’s death, his wife occupied it and then their unmarried daughter, Ellen Tucker Emerson, until her death in 1909. Still owned by the Emerson family, the house opened to the public as a private museum in 1930. The contents of his study are now located at the Concord Museum, across the street.