Monday, July 19, 2021

Mark Twain Memorial Library


 Samuel Clemens (the author Mark Twain) lived his last two years in Stormfield, an Italian villa built for him in 1908 in Redding, a town on Ridgefield's eastern border.  He died there in April 1910. 

(Stormfield was listed for sale two weeks ago for nearly $5 million, but it is on a large property and down a long driveway, so I was not able to photograph it.) 

Two months after Twain died, his daughter Clara donated Twain's personal library in Stormfield to the directors of a library to be built in Redding.  In 1911 the Mark Twain Memorial Library was opened. 

 A year later Andrew Carnegie endowed it with a fund sufficient to support it.


I support renewable energy, but I'm not excited about solar panels on the roof of a historic building.

Many Twain sayings are written high on the library's walls.  

At the end of the reading room:  "When in doubt, tell the truth."

"Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates."

6 comments:

  1. It is a beautiful library, Jack!

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  2. What great architectural details both outside and inside.

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  3. I have always admired Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and his works. The Library looks great, and I don't mind the solar panels. They will keep costs down while helping the environment.

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  4. I'm OK with those panels, if they are helping their bills to stay down and to keep the place open. We're really all going to have to do some reckoning I think. Do you have some ideas about what could be done instead? I'm not being a smarty-pants by asking that question. It's serious. I don't have many ideas......

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