The William Dean Howells House at 37 Concord Avenue

The William Dean Howells House is located at 37 Concord Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The house was designed by Howell's wife, Elinor Mead, and occupied by the family from 1873 to 1878. The family moved into the home on July 7, 1873, after Howells purchased land on Concord Avenue in 1872 for 33 cents per square foot. Howells and his wife agreed the house was "the prettiest house in Cambridge" and intended to live there for the rest of their lives.

Authors including Mark Twain, Henry James, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Thomas Bailey Aldrich visited the Howells in this house, as did U.S. President James Garfield. Helen Keller lived there afterwards while attending school. The family left the home in 1878, moving to Redtop in Belmont and later to a home near Gloucester, Massachusetts.

After Elinor Mead Howells died in May 1910, Howells considered moving back to the house with his daughter, but they found it "dreadful in its ghostliness and ghastliness" and noted the area had become noisy due to nearby trolley lines. In recent times, the house fell into serious disrepair but was restored in 2011 by a local historic-restoration-specialist builder after consultations with the City of Cambridge Historical Commission.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons