the wayside

When I stopped to visit, it wasn't open, and it looked to be under significant painting and/or remodeling/restoration. It does look like an interesting place, if it was open (perhaps at a different time then when I stopped)

This building is just beyond the Orchard House and is now undergoing serious rehab. No tours, no access without a hard hat, but clearly worth a look. Very creative scaffolding. Apparently, like many repairs to old houses, one thing leads to another .... I look forward to going back when the work is done and the property once again open to the public. Target date is 2014 -- my guess is later rather than sooner.

It's uniquely fascinating that this home was lived in by both Louisa May Alcott & Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the tour interpreters give an excellent background on each. I can't remember which one did it, but one famous writer left their mark on one of the windows . . .quirky bit of history.

The house was closed due to fire damage so were unable to go in. However there was a smalll exhibition and a very helpful custodian.

The Wayside is the only historic house in Concord that is maintained by the government. It is also the house in the worst disrepair. There is a wonderful historical/educational display before you enter the home. The park rangers are well versed in the happenings of the home.The Wayside needs you to visit it and support it. Go!

We remember many visits with my mother and father when we would visit them in Mass. Such serene surroundings. The restaurant is old in the best possible way. Traditional New England fare at unbelievably reasonable prices. And now al fresco dining!

We love to go to the wayside inn !Good food' very traditional and very clean.Specially all this old room with to much history and walk around after dinner. Great place to go with family.

The Wayside has tour times that are a little different then the other houses in the area, so call and check the times. Park down and across the street. Easy walk to Orchard House. Great value too. I paid $5, children under a certain age were free.

The Alcott family lived here before it was bought and remodeled by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Very cool to be in the attic room where he wrote on a flip-down desk. The house itself is dark and dank, but wonderful stories are told of Hawthorne reading to his family beside the fire.

I took a tour here,my 2nd in 4 or 5 years...and it was conducted by Ranger David, with a warm up in the visitor center by Ranger Jane....both of these guides are well credentialled and very much into the subject. They both love what they do, and it shows, and gets you excited about this author and his very interesting family...one of his inlawss was Horace Mann, creator of the American school system and his sister in law opebed the 1st Kindergarten in the USA...his best friend was his college room mate and frequent guest, 14th president of the USA, Franklin Pierce.

The National Park Service operates this 300 year old house, on a seasonal basis, April to October...check the schedule on line. They do a fabulous job, and I met 2 Park Rangers, a Mr. Hannon who conducted the house tour, and who did a superlative job ( he used to be a school teacher,history,I recall); This clearly is a labor of love for him; the other guide,Jane,entertained us while we waited for our tour to begin, and she is a published historian, and she provided us with a lot of background information about the Hawthornes and their lives before we began the house tour.We are fortunate to have such dedicated employees of the National Park Service, for them,their work is clearly something that they love.

We stopped at the The Wayside as part of our outing to Minute Man Park. We were not aware that it was a guided tour ($5/person) and spent a few minutes trying to get into the locked house until a ranger stopped us. Once she thwarted my life of new-found life of crime, we paid for the tour.It’s a joy to have a tour with a guide who so clearly enjoys the subject matter. She was full of facts and anecdotes about the Alcotts and Hawthornes. The tour dealt with the various stages of construction that the house had gone through with the succeeding families and spent a fair amount of time on the architecture and landscaping that each family added. I’m not saying my teenage son was enraptured by tour, but he seemed to enjoy himself for the 45 minutes.It’s not the kind of place that I’d return to, but I enjoyed the visit and felt it was well-worth the $5.

The Wayside is another fascinating house in Concord -- not only for its history (home to both the Alcott and Hawthorne families), but also for its quirky architecture in which the phases of the life of the house are clearly visible.The Park Service Ranger who conducted our tour was a delightful person and very knowledgeable. (Thanks George!) We visited this site and then went to Orchard House. (Emerson House was closed for the day) The tours of these houses really gave us a feel for the life led by the Alcotts and the Hawthornes, and for relationships within the literary community of Concord in the time of Emerson, Hawthorne and the Alcotts. The house itself is in a sad state of repair, so go and see it and support its preservation in any way you can.

After you visit Orchard House and listen to the fairly glowing reports of Alcott family relations, head to the Wayside House for the real scoop! Don't let the fact that the Wayside House is in shameful condition deter you -- the guide we had made Hawthorne, the Alcotts, and, due to our professed ignorance of American history, even the Revolutionary War, come to life! He made Bronson Alcott sound like a looney (true, our Alcott guide had earlier mentioned that he forbade the family from ever eating meat, milk, and root vegetables -- this long before refrigeration. No surprise the girls were so vulnerable to disease during the winter) -- but the Wayside guide added the tales of the "free love" commune that lasted for 6 mos., as well as other tales that would make your hair curl! No wonder that Louisa vowed never to marry (or that the character of the father in "Little Women" is a vague presence at best). For literary fans: when I studied Hawthorne, my profs stressed the symbolism of evil that lurked in the dark forest paths versus the light of the town, as well as the theme of good and evil in Hawthorne's works. I learned on this tour that Hawthorne created his own path through the "dark" woods SIMPLY to avoid Bronson Alcott's repeated attempts at "social conversion"! How ironic that those "dark forest paths" were preferable to certain members of the human society at the time! The guides in Concord make these tours come alive. The male ego reigned supreme in those patriarchal days (check out the print that hangs in the dining room of Emerson House for a good laugh) and all the guides manage to give bits of information that help to keep Hawthorne, Bronson Alcott (probably the inspiration for the quote: "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach'), and Emerson slightly off-balance on those literary pedestals that schools and literary fan clubs tend to put them on.Be sure to ask lots of questions (we did), and you will open an amazing world of info. The guides in Concord know their local history!

The tour first introduces the history of the Wayside, from the Alcott, Hawthorne, and Lothrop families. Then the tour goes through the home itself, providing many historical details - and tying the home to the revolutionary war. Our tour only had 4 people, so it was essentially a private tour. Afterwards, go to the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery and see their final resting place.