Gather 'Round at the Nook Farm Tap, 1800s

Asylum Hill's Nook Farm, situated west and south of a bend in Park River, USA, started as the Imlay farm. In 1853, John Hooker and Francis Gillette bought it from William Imlay for real estate development. They erected homes and sold plots to relatives, creating an art colony. The colony included the Hookers, Gillettes, Charles Dudley Warner, Joseph Roswell Hawley, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, the Rev. Nathaniel Judson Burton, Rachel Pine Chase Burton, and a horde of journalists, feminists, spiritualists, painters, writers, reformers, and activists.

This tight-knit community thrived through a web of family and business connections. The homes were architects' crown jewels: Edward Tuckerman Potter, Francis Hatch Kimball, Richard Upjohn. Many perished over the years, but some relics endure: Mark Twain House, Harriet Beecher Stowe House, Katherine Day House. The John and Isabella Hooker House turned apartment, 36 Forest Street, a later build in 1895. A large chunk of Nook Farm landed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

Anchored by twins Mark Twain House and Harriet Beecher Stowe House, it stretches south on Forest Street, north on Woodland and Gillett Streets, nearly reaching Niles Street. The surviving mansion homes and early 20th-century apartment blocks remain.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons