Billiard Room

During the time that Mark Twain lived in Hartford he wrote many of his best-known works, including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, while hidden away on the third floor in his Billiard Room.

Now newly restored, the Billiard Room helps visitors experience the story and atmosphere of this unique space and better understand how Twain used his private domain to write the works that Ernest Hemingway would credit as being the beginning of Modern American literature.

Guided by a rigorously researched historic furnishings plan and painstaking analysis of physical evidence (e.g., historic mortar, wallpaper fragments, old carpet tacks, and long-forgotten paint), The Mark Twain House & Museum restored the Billiard Room from floor to ceiling from 2003-2004. In addition to the grand billiard table once owned by Twain, resting on a reproduction 1874 "Kinver Turkey" pattern carpet and illuminated by a restored gasolier, the details help tell the story of the room. Open books, papers scattered on the billiard table and floor, and notes tacked up on the wall suggest Twain was active as well as messy when he wrote. The billiard table brush resting on the mantel shelf, cue rack stocked with cues, and elegant, but comfortable chairs indicate how Twain entertained guests or relaxed alone.