Arrowhead, also known as the Herman Melville House, is a historic house museum in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. It was the home of American author Herman Melville during his most productive years, 1850–1863. Here, Melville wrote some of his major works: the novels Moby-Dick, Pierre (dedicated to nearby Mount Greylock), The Confidence-Man, and Israel Potter; The Piazza Tales (a short story collection named for Arrowhead's porch); and magazine stories such as "I and My Chimney".
The house, located at 780 Holmes Road in Pittsfield, was built in the 1780s as a farmhouse and inn. It was adjacent to a property owned by Melville's uncle Thomas, where Melville had developed an attachment to the area through repeated visits. He purchased the property in 1850 with borrowed money and spent the next twelve years farming and writing there. Financial considerations prompted his family's return to New York City in 1863, and Melville sold the property to his brother.
The house remained in private hands until 1975, when the Berkshire County Historical Society acquired the house and a portion of the original property. The Society restored most of the house to Melville's period and operates it as a house museum; it is open to the public during warmer months. It has been designated a National Historic Landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Construction and early history
Construction of the oldest portions of the house known as Arrowhead took place in the 1780s. Built by Captain David Bush, the wood frame and clapboard house was apparently used as an inn. The Bush family sold the property to Pittsfield doctor John Brewster in 1844, who in 1850 sold the property to the writer Herman Melville. The house at that time consisted of a simple rectangular structure with five window bays across and two deep, with a large central chimney. There is some evidence that the house may originally have had three stories, but at the time of the Melville purchase in 1850, it only had two and a half.
Melville in Pittsfield
Herman Melville was born in New York City in 1819. His maternal grandparents lived in Albany, New York, where his parents took their family in 1830 after a series of financial setbacks. His uncle Thomas Melvill owned property in Pittsfield that the family had visited a few times when Melville was younger. The first significant visit Melville made to his uncle was a brief one in August 1831. After his father died in January 1832, Melville's mother took the family to Pittsfield to escape an outbreak of cholera in July 1832. It is from the time of this brief stay that Melville's interest in the Berkshires developed. In 1837 he ran his uncle's farm while the latter traveled to Illinois to pursue business opportunities. According to Melville's cousin Priscilla, during this time his attachment to the area deepened considerably.
In the summer of 1850, Melville, his wife Lizzie, and their son Malcolm vacationed in Pittsfield. The visit to his uncle's farm was bittersweet, for his uncle had agreed to sell the property, and it would be the family's last visit there. On August 5, 1850, Melville met Nathaniel Hawthorne for the first time, having only recently read his short story collection Mosses from an Old Manse. The two were among several invited to a picnic on Monument Mountain south of Pittsfield with a group that also included Evert Augustus Duyckinck and Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. Melville and Hawthorne struck up an instant friendship. Attracted by the Hawthornes, and apparently unwilling to abandon the Berkshires, Melville decided on impulse to purchase the Brewster farm, which abutted his uncle's property. According to a news report of his purchase, the property "commands one of the most extensive and splended views in Berkshire." He secured a $3,000 loan from his father-in-law Lemuel Shaw (a Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice who was in Lenox for a court session at the time), received a $1,500 mortgage from Brewster, and promised to pay the rest of the $6,500 purchase price when his New York lease was sold. The sale was finalized on September 14, 1850. To raise funds, Melville sold off in the 1850s. Shaw assumed the mortgage in 1856, took title to the property in 1857, and transferred it to Melville's wife in 1860.
Melville at Arrowhead
Melville called his new home Arrowhead because of the arrowheads that were dug up around the property during planting season. New York publisher Evert Augustus Duyckinck wrote that its "grounds would satisfy an English nobleman—for the noble maples and elms and various seclusions and outlooks". In August 1850, he described his routine to Duyckinck: