Longfellow's Wayside Inn

Longfellow's Wayside Inn 2010

http://www.wayside.org/

One Autumn night, in Sudbury town,


Across the meadows bare and brown,


The windows of the wayside inn


Gleamed red with fire-light through the leaves


Of woodbine, hanging from the eaves


Their crimson curtains rent and thin.

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow from Takes of a Wayside Inn

(http://www.hwlongfellow.org/poems_poem.php?pid=2013)

Best known for its connection to the famous Longfellow Poem Paul Revere’s Ride this old tavern sits along the Boston Post Road on 125 acres of grassy woodlands in Sudbury Township. Along with the Inn the property encompasses a gristmill, an old school house, and the Martha-Mary Chapel.  All four buildings are free of admission and tours are self guided. The Inn host’s three museum display rooms featuring colonial rural life and artifacts pertaining to the How family who ran this Inn for 145 years. While there are no interpreters at the Inn the School House and Grist Mill both have trained staff members to help explain the culture of 19^th century farm life. The Inn is still a functional hotel with a full service dining room open for lunch and dinner. The Inn is open for lunch Monday through Saturday from 11:30am, with the last seating at 2:30pm; for dinner Monday through Saturday starting at 5pm; and Sunday dinner is served all day from 12 noon, with the last seating at 7:30pm. Recommended viewing of the historic rooms is at 11am and from 2-5pm.The Grist Mill is open to the public from April to November, Wednesday through Sunday 9am to 5pm. The stones are run Saturdays and Sundays at 1pm and 4pm. The Redstone schoolhouse is open mid May through mid October, Thursday through Sunday from 11:30AM to 5PM. To get to the Inn from Boston take the Mass Pike (Rt 90) west to Rt 128 N. Take exit 26, Rt 20 W for 11 miles. Turn right on Wayside Inn Road and the Inn is 1/8 of a mile down on the right.

David Howe, along the Old Boston Post Road, founded the Inn in 1716. It was originally named Howe's Tavern, when David decided to expand his private home and change it into an Inn for people passing by coach along the busy mail road. Four generations of Howes operated the Inn, including Ezekiel Howe, who led the Sudbury Minutemen to Concord on April 19, 1775. Each generation expanded the Inn’s until the death of Lyman Howe in 1861when the Inn was inherited by relatives who ceased formal operations. In 1862 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow visited the Howe Tavern and was inspired to compile some of his poetry into a compellation of tales based at the Inn. Longfellow’s fictitious characters regularly gathered at the old Sudbury tavern to tell each other tales along the same lines at Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. The poems were published in 1863 as The Tales of a Wayside Inn, whose first poem “The Landlord’s Tale” is better known today as Longfellow’s most famous poem entitled “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere." (http://poetry.eserver.org/paul-revere.html; http://www.wayside.org/history/literary) Capitalizing on the Longfellow connection, Edward Rivers Lemon purchased the Inn in 1892, renamed it “Longfellow’s Wayside Inn,” and operated it as “a retreat for literary pilgrims.” The Inn stayed in the lemon family until 1923 when Henry Ford purchased it. Ford expanded the land, intending to create a museum of Americana. He added a one-room Redstone Schoolhouse in 1925, a fully functioning Grist Mill in 1929, and the Martha-Mary Chapel in 1940. Ford ran the Wayside Inn School for Boys on the property as a training ground to prepare the boys for employment in his factories from 1928–1947. (http://www.wayside.org/history/ford) In 1944, Henry Ford created a non-profit trust to preserve the Inn’s historic legacy. After Ford’s death a Board of Trustees governed the Inn until 1957 when the property was turned over to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. It has been a fully functional Inn and dining facility ever since. (For Information on Henry Ford: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ford)

Repro Bar Room at the Wayside Inn 2010

The Wayside Inn is a different experience than the previously reviewed historic houses since it is a self-guided site. I decided to make a reservation for lunch to get the whole experience. While the ambiance is cute and quaint the food is subpar, the service is slow, and the staff is rude. Unless you are over 60 years of age I do not recommend eating at this place, especially around lunchtime, unless an elderly person accompanies you. My group was the youngest table in the entire Inn for lunch on a Friday and we got shoved into a corner and mostly ignored, what should have been an hour meal maximum turned into a two hour affair and the resulting food was NOT worth it. After lunch I explored the historic rooms. I was a bit disappointed to see that besides interpretation of the artifacts (aka identifying what the object is and giving its provenance) there was very little information about the history of the family that owned the Inn for so long. One room was dedicated to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and his book of poetry that was inspired by the Wayside Inn for its setting. While it is wonderful that Longfellow was able to preserve a memory of the Wayside he did not stay at the Inn, nor were they convincing in making a case for his love of the old building. Most of the interpretive bulletins in the rooms where excerpts from Longfellow’s poems and they provided very little historical context. If you are looking for a site that is going to teach you about literary history, I do not recommend visiting the Inn. Although it is very cute so if you are passing by Sudbury I would recommend stopping and just walking around the grounds.

Martha-Mary Chapel At the Wayside Inn 2010

Old Gristmill at the Wayside Inn 2010

The one building I would call a “can’t miss” would be the Old gristmill. It is only half a mile down the road from the Wayside Inn and although it is a historical reproduction, seeing how flour was made in the 19^th century was an interesting experience. I was able to talk to the mill worker and he explained the process of grinding the wheat and showed me the flour he was producing right at the moment we were talking. They sell the flour and cornmeal that are produced during demonstrations ($5 for a 2 lb bag). In the basement there are interpretive panels that describe the ways water and electrical power are used to keep the mill working. It is free and you can invest as little or as much time as desired at this subsidiary site at no added admission cost. If you were in the area I would say your trip to Wayside is not complete without having stopped at the mill.

Since this site is very low key in terms of its historical interpretation I think that some different uses of media could really help advance the educational potential of the site. An introductory video, potentially done in historic dress, would be very useful in one of the Wayside show rooms to introduce the history of the Inn and the How family who ran it for ten generations. If a video is not within the budget just adding some simple sound effects (like bar noises or people coming and going) with How family quote would be a nice addition to add some dimension to the simple room displays. Even in the Henry Longfellow Room having an audio track of “Longfellow” reading parts of his poems would make the interpretation a bit more exciting, as well as better accessible for the visually handicapped.

Nina Simon’s blog Web 2.0 has a blog that discusses the pros and cons of museum interpretation based on the subject area: http://museumtwo.blogspot.com/2010/02/how-different-types-of-museums-approach.html. Although this does not specifically reference the Wayside Inn I can see them struggling with similar issues.