All are welcome to enjoy the view from Robert Frost’s porch and the poetry trail year-round.
The Frost Place is a “house museum,” a sanctuary for lovers of poetry and books on a quiet north country lane with a spectacular view of the White Mountains.
By today’s standards especially, this is a small house. The house, built in the 1860s, is miraculously well preserved thanks to the care of the families that lived here until the mid-1970s. The museum and Frost aficionados and scholars everywhere owe thanks to the foresight and concern of the citizens of Franconia, who voted at their town meeting in 1976 to purchase the former home of Robert Frost and his family in order to see to its safekeeping in perpetuity. Unlike typical modern museums, you won’t find at The Frost Place fancy multi-media displays or cafés, but if you come seeking a glimpse and a sense of the kind of place where a young poet could concentrate, and where his four children could range through the woods and orchards and discover the world, The Frost Place can still offer such pleasures. The view from the porch which inspired Frost is stunning and open to the public year round.
In addition to a collection of signed first editions of Frost’s works and other memorabilia from his stay, The Frost Place has a quarter-mile nature trail with plaques displaying poems written during the poet’s Franconia years.
Moreover, instead of being merely a site of retrospection and nostalgia, The Frost Place continues to host energetic and innovative gatherings for contemporary poets, including summer conferences and school programs, and each summer an emerging poet is awarded a fellowship with a cash stipend and an invitation to live and write in Frost’s former home for the month of July.
