After visiting Boston Commons and seeing the sights there, our photographer took a trip to Cambridge. Here he took a single picture of the Longfellow House, and another of the history sign out front.
Vintage Pictures – Longfellow House in Cambridge
The History Sign out front of the Longfellow House
The home is now a National Historic Site run by the US National Park Service. It was built by Major John Vassall, a loyalist, who fled Cambridge to Boston at the beginning of the Revolution. At the time the house was in the rural outskirts Cambridge and isolated from other loyalists. George Washington took it over as his headquarters from July 1775 to April 1776.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow first lived in the house in 1836. He lived there as a boarder until he married in 1843. At that time is father in law, Nathan Appleton bought the house as a wedding present for the couple. It remained in the family, first as a home, later as a museum until October 9, 1972. On that date Congress passed legislation authorizing the acquisition by donation of the house, officially turning it into the Longfellow National Historic Site.
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