The Old Manse, Concord

The Old Manse is a National Historic Landmark, set along the Concord River and adjacent to the Old North Bridge, where "the shot heard 'round the world" was fired. In the 19th century, the manse was home to Ralph Waldo Emerson and, later, Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose Mosses from an Old Manse was named in tribute to the house where the Hawthornes lived for the first three years of their marriage. This was also the location for inspirational meetings of fellow Transcendentalist writers, including Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller and Henry David Thoreau, who planted the garden. Love poems etched on window panes by the Hawthornes have been preserved.