Final Project Part 1 - The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center

The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center is a historic house museum and National Historic Landmark located in Hartford, CT. Harriet Beecher Stowe is best known as the author of the novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, though she also published more than 30 works during her lifetime (https://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/hbs/). Uncle Tom's Cabin is famously known as the novel Abraham Lincoln once called "the book that started this great war" (the war, of course, being the US Civil War).

 The Stowe Center consists of three buildings: the Harriet Beecher Stowe House, the Katharine Seymour Day House, and the visitors center, which inhabits an 1873 carriage house also located on the property. The Stowe House was Stowe's second house in Hartford, and was where she spent the last 23 years of her life, and is also where she passed away in 1896. Following Stowe's death, the house and surrounding property were sold out of the family, and was acquired in 1924 by Katharine Seymour Day, Stowe's grandniece. Day is considered the founder of the Stowe Center, as she bequeathed the house and its surrounding property to a foundation dedicated to Stowe's legacy. The museum was first opened to the public in 1968.
(fun fact: The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center is located right next door to the Mark Twain House, and one going to visit either historical house museum can get a discount if they go to the other at the same day. It's pretty cool.)
Today, visitors to the Stowe Center are given an introduction and open discussion in the visitors center before going on a tour of the Stowe House that is less object oriented and more subject oriented, before going back to the visitors center for an end discussion. The Center also hosts salons for the public, where people can come in for an open discussion of different issues and topics related to the mission statement of the Stowe Center. The Stowe Center also hosts guests and events related to their mission statement.
Incidentally, this is the mission statement for the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center:

"The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center preserves and interprets Stowe's Hartford home and the Center's historic collections, promotes vibrant discussion of her life and work, and inspires commitment to social justice and positive change. Harriet Beecher Stowe inspires us to believe in our own ability to effect change. Her life demonstrates one person's ability to make a difference. Stowe changed public perception of a young nation's divisive issue, slavery, using her words to change the world. Her example is as important today as it was in her time...The Stowe Center's programs and activities are energized by Stowe's example. As a 21st-century museum and program center, the Stowe Center connects Stowe's issues to the contemporary face of race relations, class and gender issues, economic justice and education equity." (https://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/about/index.shtml#mission)

Currently, the Harriet Beecher Stowe House is undergoing major renovations (the first since the house opened to the public in 1968) to install a fire suppression system, temperature controls, and do general cleaning of the house. Due to this, the house proper is closed to the public and will not be open again until late August of this year. Because of this, the Katharine Seymour Day house, which is normally not open to the public and serves as an administrative building for the center, has been opened for tours, with some of the objects from the main house having been moved over there. The tour still covers the same topics that would be covered in the main house.

(Harriet Beecher Stowe House)

(Katharine Seymour Day House)

Finally, in addition to the two houses and the visitors center, and the various public functions, the Stowe Center also preserves the house and center's collections of objects, manuscripts, and other assorted materials. The collection includes approximately 6,000 objects and over 200,000 manuscripts, books, photographs, letters, documents, and so on.