Homes With Stories
Some homes stay with me, not for their size or design, but for the lives they’ve held within their walls. I’m fascinated by how a single room can hold laughter, love, and countless moments that linger softly long after time moves on.
Recent Posts
Richard Nixon Birth Home – California
In Yorba Linda, California, tucked within the grounds of the presidential library, stands a small modest farmhouse where Richard Milhous Nixon was born in 1913. The house is a simple white clapboard with narrow rooms and modest furnishings. It reflects the Quaker values of his parents, Frank and Hannah Nixon: faith, discipline, humility and hard work. […]
Poe’s Cottage – Bronx, NY
Tucked inside Poe Park in the Bronx is a small, white cottage that feels worlds away from the city that now surrounds it. The modest home was the final residence of Edgar Allen Poe, who moved here in 1846 seeking quiet and relief for his ailing wife, Virginia. At the time, this was rural farmland far […]
Lilian Ngoyi – Soweto, South Africa
On our teaching trip to South Africa, we took a tour of Soweto and stopped outside a modest home that holds extraordinary history: the house of Lilian Masediba Matabane Ngoyi. Lilian Ngoyi was one of the most prominent women in the anti-apartheid movement. A trade unionist and political leader, she became the first woman elected to […]
John Ward House – Salem, Massachusetts
The John Ward House in Salem, Massachusetts, stands as one of the finest surviving examples of 17th century New England architecture. Built in 1684 for John Ward, a successful currier, the house reflects not only skilled craftsmanship but also the growing prosperity of Salem in the late 1600s. By the time this house was constructed, […]
Hillwood Estate – Washington DC
While we were at a convention just outside of Washington, D.C., we took a morning to drive over to this house, not only was the home beautiful, so was the collection inside it. Hillwood Estate was the residence of Marjorie Merriweather Post, the heiress to the Post cereal fortune and one of the wealthiest women in America in […]
Hearst Castle – California
On our family road trip down the coast of California, we stopped at Hearst Castle, the estate rising above the Pacific along Highway 1. You see if from below first. perched high on the Enchanted Hill, as if it were a Mediterranean palace transported to the rugged California coastline. The house was built for William […]
Codman Estate – Lincoln
The Codman House in Lincoln, known as The Grange, stands as one of the most elegant and layered historic homes in Massachusetts, and is another home that we have visited often. There is something about returning to a place like this that deepens appreciation with each visit. Build around 1747, and later expanded, the house […]
Wave Hill – Bronx, NY
Marty and I visited Wave Hill at the end of the autumn, when the Hudson shimmered below us. Perched high above the river in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, the former country estate felt worlds away from the bustle of the city with the sweeping views stretching toward the Palisades in New Jersey. Originally developed […]
First White House of the Confederacy – Montgomery, AL
While visiting Montgomery, Alabama, we visited the First White House of the Confederacy. What made the house striking to us was how early it entered the story of the Civil War. The Davis family moved into this Montgomery residence in February 1861, when the Confederate States of America had only just been formed. That same month, delegates from […]
Eugene O’Neill’s Monte Cristo Cottage – New London, Connecticut
Connecticut is not too far for a good road trip and on this day, it brought us to Eugene O’Neill’s home in New London. This house, known as the Monte Cristo Cottage, was the family’s summer home, and decades later it became immortalized as the setting for “Long Day’s Journey into Night”. This is one of […]
Edith Wharton’s Mount – Lenox, Massachusetts
Exploration through road trips was a big part of homeschooling in our household. Each spring, when historic homes reopened for the season, off we would go, ready to step into another life and another era. One such stop was Edith Wharton’s home in Lenox, Massachusetts, a place we returned to more than once, always drawn back […]
Gropius House – Lincoln, MA
We have visited the Gropius House in Lincoln several times, and often the tours were international. More than once, we found ourselves alongside visitors from Europe, particularly Germany, drawn here because of the reputation of the man who designed and lived in this remarkable home. The house was built in 1938 by Walter Gropius, one of […]
