Fodor's Expert Review The Wayside

Nathaniel Hawthorne lived at the Old Manse in 1842–45, working on stories and sketches; he then moved to Salem (where he wrote The Scarlet Letter) and later to Lenox (The House of the Seven Gables). In 1852 he returned to Concord, bought this rambling structure called The Wayside, and lived here until his death in 1864. The home certainly appealed to literary types: the subsequent owner of The Wayside, Margaret Sidney, wrote the children's book Five Little Peppers and How They Grew (1881), and before Hawthorne moved in, the Alcotts lived here, from 1845 to 1848. Notably, The Wayside is a site on the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom program, as the Alcotts helped at least one enslaved person on his way to Canada and freedom. An exhibit center, in the former barn, provides information about the Wayside authors and links them to major events in American history. Hawthorne's tower-study, with his stand-up writing desk, is substantially as he left it.