Notable American Houses/Hawthorne's Birthplace
Hawthorne was born in a modest wooden house on a secluded street of Salem, Massachusetts. He was the chronicler of the romance of his town, and of a time in its history long antedating his own—of Salem, the city of witchcraft and witches, of frocked fanaticism and Puritan diablerie, of the ghastly mania that—worse than plague or pestilence—ran its evil course towards fatal Gallows Hill. Chronicler also of two or more modern, better periods, of the placid port, the sea-shore and sea-faring men whose occupations has in the main slipped away.
Hawthorne was one of those men of letters, perhaps most distinguished of them all, who, crossing the Atlantic laid down their charming works for the entertainment, and, truth to tell, no little astonishment of our kin across the sea.
Hawthorne dignified American literature. He was one of those pioneers who civilized the wilderness of the commonplace in our fiction.
Apart from his Fame as an author, Beyond even the renowned of his. “Scarlet Letter” And "House of the Seven Gables," above the plaudits of the public for his public work, I hold Hawthorne's private bequests to posterity to have been more largely meritorious. Surely his must have been a noble, as well as highly gifted character, which was so fitly framed as to leave hostages to memory in his honor children. Who will not understand all I mean that has seen the lovely if lowly ministrations of his daughter among the poor, oppressed with the most horrible of afflictions of the body—the poor of the awful East Side of the City of New York? Who will not honor the father for the work of Rose Hawthorne-Lathrop?