Building On A Literary Legacy, Mark Twain House

Has Opened Its New Museum & Visitors Center

HARTFORD — The Mark Twain House & Museum opened more than doors when it unveiled its new museum center last month.

The museum center, which had a celebratory opening on November 17 and its public opening the following day, uses new ideas and new technologies to explain and enhance the legacy of one of America’s most revered icons. In doing so, it marks a stunning transformation for the institution and helps redefine Hartford’s cultural heritage landscape.

The Mark Twain House was the author’s Hartford home, his primary residence from 1874 to 1891 – the period during which he wrote seven of his greatest works including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Fine and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. A National Register Landmark since 1963, the house – at 351 Farmington Avenue in the historic Asylum Hill section of Hartford – is open year-round for guided tours.

“This is an exciting moment for an institution that has worked for 75 years to preserve this National Landmark house and teach future generations about the richness of Twain’s work,” Executive Director John V. Boyer said. “We are incorporating leading ideas in architectural design and cutting edge technology to take Mark Twain’s legacy well beyond the physical borders of our institution.

“With this new center,” continued Mr Boyer, “we are ensuring that Mark Twain becomes what he hoped for when he wrote in a 1909 letter to J. Pierpont Morgan: ‘One of my high ideals … is to remain indestructible in a perishable world.’”

To demonstrate the transformation staff members hope the new center will bring, the institution has been renamed The Mark Twain House & Museum. The nearly 33,000-square foot multi-use center will allow the organization to offer a fuller visitor experience and a deeper appreciation of Twain’s life, times and achievements.

“We still provide visitors the unique opportunity to experience by touring the very house where Sam Clemens lived, raised his family, and wrote his most famous works,” said Mr Boyer. Tours are now enhanced with a new orientation exhibition, an expanded theater for an orientation film by Ken Burns, interactive learning experiences, and improved visitor amenities.

The education center offers state-of-the-art distance learning techniques and systems to support computer-aided research opportunities. A 175-seat theater with Internet-ready audio-visual technologies enables the institution to expand its nationally recognized symposia and lecture series, including the Clemens Lectures.

Two 26-seat wired classrooms now allow teachers in Hartford to host multi-dimensional learning experiences from coast to coast and internationally.

“The technological enhancements in the Museum Center will allow us to expand our education, outreach and teacher-in-training programs, as well as to give scholars, educators and school groups a place to conduct primary research,” noted Mr Boyer. “We have a unique opportunity because when we collaborate with teachers at our neighbor, Hartford Public High School, we will be able to transmit programs to classrooms around the world.”

A 2,000-square foot gallery now allows the museum its first opportunity to present changing exhibitions year-round on issues that relate to Twain’s life and times, his years in Hartford, the Victorian era, and the ongoing relevance of his remarkable body of work. The Aetna Gallery is offering a permanent orientation exhibition, “I have sampled this life,” examining Twain’s continued influence. The gallery space is also suitable for receptions.

The Museum Center will also improve the overall visitor experience with an expanded museum store and a new café that is open daily for breakfast, lunch and snacks, and for dinner on Thursday evenings now that the museum has expanded its operating hours and is open until 8 pm.

The café offers indoor seating for 60 and an outdoor terrace with additional seating for 75.

The $16.5 million center is also a repository for the institution’s 50,000-item collection of rare books, manuscripts, photographs, Victorian era artifacts, and fine and decorative arts, many of which have never been on public display. It is also the home of a curatorial workroom.

Mr Boyer expects the facility to substantially increase visitation to the museum and other cultural heritage and arts venues in Hartford. The museum already hosted approximately 70,000 visitors annually.

“From the start of this project we believed that the Museum Center could bring long-term benefits to other cultural institutions in the city, as well as to the hotels, restaurants and stores that serve the tourism industry,” said Mr Boyer. “Today more than 80 percent of our visitors are from out of state, and by enhancing their experience at The Mark Twain House & Museum, we believe they will provide a significant economic stimulus to the city and the region.”

Construction Challenges

And Unique Features

The $16.5 million, 33,000-square foot center was designed by Robert A.M. Stern, the founder of Robert A.M. Stern Associates (RAMSA). Mr Stern, the dean of Yale School of Architecture and the designer of The Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass., and the Roger Tory Peterson Institute in Jamestown, N.Y., recently completed major commissions for Harvard and Princeton universities. Mr Stern’s firm was selected after a yearlong nationwide search that led to a final field of six architects vying for the job.

One of the challenges facing the architects was a mandate to construct a modern museum to meet the future needs of museum and education offices while respecting the integrity of the existing historical site and buildings.

Mr Stern’s solution was to build the Museum Center into the slope of the property’s hillside so that the new building does not dominate the Victorian-era structures – The Twain House and its adjacent Carriage House – that make up the Mark Twain House complex, or the other historic properties in the Nook Farm area, including the adjacent Harriet Beecher Stowe House.

The construction materials – all natural elements including stone, brick, slate and marble – were chosen to complement The Mark Twain House. The architects utilized a natural color palette throughout so that even the exterior and interior color scheme of the new facility coordinates with existing buildings. The color pattern in the public restrooms, for example, feature a natural tile accented with a red brick-colored square border, a motif that echoes the exterior brick pattern on The Mark Twain House.

Mr Boyer noted that the institution placed an additional demand on the architects: Develop an energy efficient “green” building.

“Twain was a man who loved the wonders of the modern age, so we felt an obligation to expand on his fascination with inventions by building a center that uses innovative technologies to be environmentally friendly,” he said.

As a result The Museum Center is the first Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)-certified museum in the nation and the first LEED-certified building of any kind in the state.

Among its energy enhancements are geothermal wells as the predominant heating and cooling source for the facility (instead of fossil fuel); a heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system with an overall energy efficiency nearly 30 percent greater than a system designed to building code; and adjustments in construction techniques and materials to save energy.

The building has also been designed to accept future energy saving enhancements such as photo-voltaic solar panels on its south wall and, potentially, fuel cells.

The zoning and air filtration requirements of the building systems will enhance indoor environmental quality for visitors and staff.

A monumental staircase from the first to second floors is the primary vertical circulation for visitors. This allowed the elimination of a passenger elevator, conserving fossil fuel and elevator maintenance costs, providing a unique visitor experience.

Native vegetation was selected for landscape purposes, eliminating the need for an irrigation system and increased water use.

Wood products used in the project came from FSC certified sources that confirm renewable and responsible forestry practices. Recycled material content exceeds 25 percent throughout the project.

Dressed For The Holidays

Throughout the holiday season, the 19-room Tiffany decoration mansion that is the centerpiece of The Mark Twain House & Museum, is adorned as it would have been for holiday celebrations during the time Samuel Clemens and his family lived in the house.

Through January 19, visitors can enjoy the feeling of having that they have stepped back into time and walking into Twain’s home on Christmas day. Adults and children can all enjoy the subtle reminders of Christmas past throughout the house thanks to extensive research done by the house and museum’s curatorial staff.

“The house is decorated according to information gleamed from the Clemens family letters and receipts for every thing from food, to ribbons and wreaths,” said Diane Forsberg, the chief curator of The Mark Twain House & Museum. “We want to make sure that we are presenting not just a beautifully decorated Victorian house but also a glimpse at how this family celebrated the season.”

Throughout the house there are baskets overflowing with gifts, as prepared by Mrs Clemens, which were brought to friends and neighbors. She also made up at least fifty such baskets for the poor each holiday season.

The dining room table is set for a traditional Christmas dinner and the smell of holiday cookies fills the air. In the entry hall, a kissing ball of mistletoe dangles overhead, and the home’s massive staircase is wreathed in garlands and ribbons. Greenery adorns the many doorways on the first floor as well as the manteLs throughout the house. Gifts in various stages of wrapping are placed in bedrooms and the children’s schoolroom.

“Traditionally Christmas trees in the late 19th Century were decorated with both store-bought and hand-made ornaments. The tree on display, complete with hand-strung popcorn and cranberries, reflects the true Christmas tree of that period,” said collections manager Patti Philippon. Gifts found beneath the tree are representative of gifts that the family actually received, according to letters written by the Clemens family members.

The Mark Twain House & Museum is open daily throughout December. Guided tours are conducted from 9:30 am to 5:30 pm daily. Friday through Wednesday, the last tour begins at 4:45. Hours on Thursday are 10 am to 8 pm, with the last tour at 7:15. The museum is closed Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day.

Call 860-247-0998 or visit www.MarkTwainHouse.org for additional information.