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Designated
a National Historic Landmark and listed on the National
Register of Historic Places, the Eudora Welty House,
at 1119 Pinehurst Street in Jackson, Mississippi,
is of exceptional national significance. It was the
home of internationally acclaimed author Eudora Welty,
from 1925 until her death in 2001, and the home where
she wrote almost all of her fiction and essays. |
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In
1925 at age 16, Eudora, her parents, Christian and Chestina,
and her two brothers, Edward and Walter, moved to their
new home on Pinehurst Street in the Belhaven neighborhood.
The Tudor Revival style house was designed for the Welty
family by Wyatt C. Hedrick, of the firm of Sanguinet,
Staats, and Hedrick of Fort Worth, Texas, the firm that
had designed the Lamar Life Building, then under construction
for the Lamar Life Insurance Company, of which Christian
Welty was a senior officer.
The
Eudora Welty House is one of the most intact literary
houses in America in terms of its authenticity. Its
exterior, interior, and furnishings are as they were
in 1986 when Welty made the decision to bequeath her
home to the State of Mississippi: paintings, photographs,
objects d’art, linens, furniture, draperies,
rugs, and, above all, thousands of books in their
original places. With virtually every wall lined with
books, it is evident that this family of readers valued
the written word. The library includes works produced
by classic writers through the ages and by the best
minds of the twentieth century.
Welty
always considered this her family home, and in giving
it to the State of Mississippi, she emphasized that
it was the house of her family, a family that honored
books and reading. She did not want a “house
about her” but about literature and the arts
in culture.
Click
here to take a virtual tour of the Eudora Welty House
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