Historian Charles Bahne covers the history of Cambridge's Brattle Street, an elegant Massachusetts residential thoroughfare and historic district. He treats the topic chronologically and looks at the buildings and residents that have occupied the street.
Jan Turnquist, executive director of Orchard House, looks at the history of the Orchard House, childhood home of novelist Louisa May Alcott and her family. Turnquist describes the lives of each family member in detail. The presentation includes slides.
Audio and video options are available.
According to the WGBH website:
"Charles Hammond Gibson, Jr. (1874-1954) was a Boston writer and bachelor bon vivant, best known for having preserved his family's Beacon Street home as a museum of Victorian style and taste. The Wounded Eros, a short documentary film by Todd Gernes, explores the aesthetic relationship between Gibson's literary production and the material culture contexts of his museum and library, set within the social history of turn-of-the-century gay Boston. Following the film, a dramatic reading, These Four Walls: A History of a Romantic Friendship, directed by Jacqueline Romeo and featuring John Anderson and Aleksander Feliks Wierzbicki, will extend the exploration of Gibson's life by depicting his enduring relationship with the eccentric self-styled "Count" Maurice de Mauny Talvande."
Biographer Charles Calhoun looks at the life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and the society he encouraged and kept at his Craigie House, which included many major writers and intellectuals of the day.
The audio of this lecture is available independently as an mp3 file.
This outdoor museum encompasses authentically restored and furnished structures representing rural life in East Texas c. 1900. The purpose of the museum is to preserve the rural culture and architectural heritage of Texas to ensure present and future generations an opportunity to celebrate their heritage.
Hopkins was 10 times Governor of Rhode Island and signed the Declaration of Independence. His 1707 home is one of Providence's oldest surviving buildings.
The house offers tours.
When Jesse Holman combined the Latin words for spring, summer, and fall to name his property Veraestau in 1810, he hoped winter would never touch his home. Set high above the Ohio River in Aurora, IN, the landmark home captures a long sweep of Indiana's architectural history and exemplifies the historic preservation practiced by generations of two families—the Holman/Hamilton clan and the O'Brien/Gibson family.
The home offers tours.
Visitors to the 1865 Morris-Butler House can immerse themselves in the Victorian era. Tours, events, and exhibits at the museum highlight architecture, decorative arts, and family life in the 19th century. From the formal parlor to the private living quarters, visitors can see how an upper-middle-class family and its servants lived in the Victorian era. Rare furnishings fill rooms adorned with stenciled ceilings and elaborate wallpaper and plasterwork. In addition to its architecture, the museum contains a collection of 19th-century sculptures, paintings, and lithographs from all over the world.
The house offers exhibits, tours, occasional living history events, and other educational and recreational events and programs.
Owned and restored by Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana, the 1841 Huddleston Farmhouse is open to the public as a museum where visitors learn about the daily lives of John and Susannah Huddleston and their 11 children, as well as the travelers who crowded the porches and yard and rented the farmhouse's two "travelers' kitchens" for cooking and sleeping. Travelers' diaries, archaeological digs, county records, and recollections of the Huddlestons' descendants are part of the guided tour that paints a rich picture of real lives in a young state.
The house offers exhibits, tours, and educational and recreational events.
The Dangberg Home Ranch Historic Park is one of Carson Valley's first and largest ranches. The ranch was home to German immigrant Heinrich Friedrich Dangberg, who founded the site in 1857. A local businessman, rancher, and politician, Dangberg started his ranch with just a log cabin. At the time of his death in 1904, he had created a 20,000 acre ranching empire that his sons expanded to 48,000 acres. More than five acres of the ranch are now owned by Douglas County and managed by Nevada State Parks. The county and state are restoring the original buildings, including a main house, a stone cellar, a laundry building, a carriage house, a garage, and a bunkhouse. These buildings and original artifacts are on display.
The site offers tours.