Harriet Beecher Stowe Center and The Mark Twain House & Museum to Reopen After Pandemic Shutdown

The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center and The Mark Twain House & Museum have announced that they are both reopening to the public for guided tours starting Thursday, April 8 and Saturday, April 10 respectively. Both organizations are eager to welcome back visitors after having been closed for a large part of 2020.

Situated in the historic Nook Farm neighborhood in the West End of Hartford, these adjacent tourism attractions welcome tens of thousands of visitors and field trips annually. Both museums will resume tours with safe visitation protocols including reduced tour capacities and frequency and mandatory mask use for guests and staff. Due to the smaller tour sizes, advance online ticket reservations are highly recommended for both sites to avoid disappointment.

The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center will restart guided tours Thursday, April 8. New evening hours on Thursdays, convenient online ticketing, best practices in COVID-19 safety, and small tour size all converge to make visits better than ever. New tour hours are Thursdays, 12:30pm-8pm (last tour at 7pm); Fridays, 11:30am-6:00pm (last tour at 5pm); and Saturdays, 8:30am-5:30pm (last tour at 4:30pm). Tours will run every hour on the hour Thursdays and Fridays. On Saturdays tours will expand with start times every 30 minutes. The museum highly recommends purchasing tickets online ahead of time; for more information, visit stowecenter.org/visit/tour.

"We are eager to restart tours here at the Stowe Center," said Briann Greenfield, executive director of the Stowe Center. "It's exciting to bring life back to the Nook Farm area in a safe and revitalized way. Join us to discuss Stowe's work as an author and activist, the complicated legacy of Uncle Tom, and the relevance of her journey to social justice struggles today."

The Mark Twain House & Museum will resume guided tours on Saturday, April 10. Tours will go out every hour on the half hour, with the first tour departing at 10:30am EST and the last tour departing at 3:30pm EST. Tours will be limited to six guests to allow for social distance between visitors in every room of the house. The museum continues to monitor the ever-changing situation and is constantly updating their visitor guidelines as necessary. To ensure the best possible visitor experience, the museum highly recommends purchasing tickets online ahead of time. For the most up-to-date information on hours and to purchase tickets, please visit marktwainhouse.org/visit.

"After a long, cold winter, we are delighted to be opening the Mark Twain House to the public once again," said Pieter Roos, the museum's executive director. "We look forward to welcoming visitors from around the country, to learn about and enjoy the remarkable legacy of Mark Twain and his family in Hartford."

The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center is a museum, research library, and program center in Hartford, Connecticut. Our mission is to preserve and interpret Stowe's Hartford home and the center's historic collections, promote vibrant discussion of her life and work, and inspire commitment to social justice and positive change. For more information on Stowe, her legacy, family, and her most famous novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, visit stowecenter.org.

Programs at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center include a free community day on Harriet's Birthday, June 12 (with a June 13 rain date) and a number of art installations in the garden this season, as well as the return of our Salons at Stowe series. Stowe Center programming is made possible in large part by the support of The Hartford, The Travelers Foundation, CT Humanities, and the Department of Economic and Community Development, Office the Arts.

The Mark Twain House & Museum is the restored Hartford, Connecticut home where American author Samuel Clemens -- Mark Twain -- and his family lived from 1874 to 1891. Twain wrote his most important works, including Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, during the years he lived there. The museum offers tours of the restored Mark Twain House, along with a variety of programs that celebrate and promote Twain's literary legacy.

Programs at The Mark Twain House & Museum are made possible in part by support from the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development, Office of the Arts, and the Greater Hartford Arts Council's United Arts Campaign and its Travelers Arts Impact Grant program, with major support from The Travelers Foundation. For more information call 860-247-0998 or visit marktwainhouse.org

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