The Old Manse
Built in 1770 for patriot minister William Emerson, The Old Manse, a
National Historic Landmark, became the center of Concord’s political,
literary, and social revolutions over the course of the next century. In
the mid-19th-century, leading Transcendentalists such as Bronson
Alcott, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller discussed the issues of
the day here, with the Hawthorne and Ripley families.
A handsome
Georgian clapboard building, The Old Manse sits near the banks of the
Concord River among rolling fields edged by centuries-old stone walls
and graced by an orchard. From upstairs, you can look out over the North
Bridge, where the famous battle of April 19, 1775, took place.
The Caesar Robbins House
The Robbins House is a home built by the son of slavery survivor and
Revolutionary War veteran Caesar Robbins in the early 1800s. This house
was originally located on a small farm at the edge of Concord’s Great
Meadows, in an area where a handful of self-emancipated Africans and
their families established their homes. The last African American
occupants left the house in the 1860s, and in the winter of 1870-71 the
building was moved to Bedford St. In 2011 the Drinking Gourd Project
moved the house to land adjacent to the North Bridge parking lot, where
it is prominently displayed for Concord visitors. It will serve as an
interpretive center for Concord’s early African history.
