The Mark Twain House

Long celebrated for its apparent whimsy and stylistic idiosyncrasy, the Twain House is more accurately noted as an inspired and sophisticated expression of modernity. In this design, the architect Edward Tuckerman Potter expanded on his earlier Nook Farm house for George and Lilly Warner (built 1870, destroyed c.1960). For Twain however, Potter employed a vibrant palette of painted brick reminiscent of William Butterfield's work in England of the 1860s and traditional chalet designs of the Alsatian region of France.

The Twain house is defined mostly by the variety and unpredictability of its elements. No two elevations are alike; generally symmetrical gables are, upon closer inspection, subtly different in their decorative treatments: various chimneys and towers rise spontaneously in contrast to the calming, broad sweep of the deep porches and porte cochere. The painted brick diaper pattern seems to strain as it contains the shifting surfaces of the walls and the vigorously projecting bays.

This commitment to experimentation is also revealed in the exotic and provocative interiors designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany and his partners in Associated Artists. Cultures and styles from around the globe are celebrated and reinterpreted in the dense network of pattern, texture, and color throughout the first floor of the house. Northern Africa, the Far East and India are woven together in a bravura performance of a knowing and elegant eclecticism that helped set a new standard for the Gilded Age.

New technologies were also employed that included a gravity flow heat system, split flues to allow for windows over two fireplaces, and seven bathrooms with flush toilets. In addition, Twain was both proud of, and flummoxed by, his telephone, one of the very first installed in a private home. When combined with his profoundly new way of writing as he advanced his increasingly progressive social and political views, the house is more clearly appreciated as a landmark of modern American thought in the fullest sense.