louisa may alcott house tour

Take a Virtual Tour of Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House

Have you ever wondered about Orchard House , the property that inspired “Little Women” author Louisa May Alcott? Why not take a virtual trip to Concord , Massachusetts , and visit it for yourself?

Since May 27, 1912, Orchard House has been open to the public as a historic house museum. American teacher, philosopher, writer, and reformer Amos Bronson Alcott owned this property, and American novelist Louisa May Alcott resided in it when she wrote “ Little Women .”

Amos Bronson Alcott purchased the house in 1857 for $945. The property includes 12 acres of land and a manor house, and the grounds are home to an orchard of 40 apple trees. With this detail in mind, the home’s name, “Orchard House,” makes a lot of  sense.

Mary Richardson, a beloved Boston TV personality, has referred to the house as “America’s Home,” and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Prof. John Matteson has dubbed it “the best place in the world.”

The Alcotts indeed would have agreed with these statements, as they lived at Orchard House until 1877. Since then, few structural changes have taken place. Approximately 80 percent of the furnishings on display at the now-museum belonged to the Alcotts, and the rooms still look very similar to the way they did when the family still called the house home.

Orchard House is generally open for guided tours. Visitors can take a walk through the property and learn about the Alcott family members, their achievements, and the influences they had on the characters in “ Little Women .”

For now, however, it remains temporarily closed due to COVID-19 restrictions. Those who want to explore the property but can’t make it there in person during these unprecedented times can check it out by taking a virtual tour.

For just $10 (less than the cost of an in-person tour), virtual visitors can enjoy a 15-minute tour from Jan Turnquist, the Executive Director of Orchard House, as “Miss Alcott.” Visitors also get to enjoy a 20-minute bonus video, which allows them to learn more about the original Alcott artifacts on display in the house, and free admission for an in-person guided tour “when the fates allow.”

To see a trailer of what the tour is like, potential patrons can visit the following link .

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Orchard House

Immortalized by Louisa May Alcott in the beloved 1868 classic, Little Women , Orchard House provides heartwarming accounts of the talented Alcott family’s legacy through lively guided tours, unique educational programs, and special living history events year-round.  Orchard House also played an integral role in the development of the only truly American philosophy, Transcendentalism, and is one of the oldest historic sites in the country. In addition, A. Bronson Alcott’s School of Philosophy, on the grounds of Orchard House since 1879, was one of the most successful 19th C. adult education centers in the country.  Museum Store on premises

399 Lexington Road Concord, MA 01742

978-369-4118

https://louisamayalcott.org/

399 Lexington Road, Concord, MA, USA

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Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House

Home of Louisa May Alcott, famous author of Little Women, the story written and set at this location, and her family, including her father Amos Bronson Alcott, philosopher, writer, and educator. Guided tours, educational programs, living history events, teacher workshops, and changing exhibitions available; Museum Store on premises. Open daily, check website for admission price.

399 Lexington Road Concord, MA 01742

Jan Turnquist

(978) 369-4118

[email protected]

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• Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House

From the website LouisaMayAlcott.org – “Orchard House (c. 1650) is most noted for being where Louisa May Alcott wrote and set Little Women in 1868. This noble home also has a rich history stretching back two centuries beforehand, as well as more than 100 years of life as a treasured historic site open to the public.”

This is a fascinating landmark. The tour guides bring the place to life describing the living conditions of the day and the interaction with famous neighbors Emerson, Thoreau and Hawthorne. A Must See.

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Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House is seeing an influx in visitors—but there’s more to the home than ‘Little Women’

The former home of the beloved author, located in Concord, Massachusetts, welcomes visitors from all over the world

By Elizabeth Yuko & Roadtrippers

Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House is one of the rare places that exists in both fiction and reality. The former home of the beloved author is located in Concord, Massachusetts, 20 miles northwest of Boston. Alcott both wrote and set her seminal novel Little Women in her family home, which has seen an increase in visitors thanks to a 2018 PBS adaptation and, most recently, Greta Gerwig’s Academy Award nominated 2019 film centered around the fictional March family. 

Though none of Gerwig’s Little Women was shot in or around Orchard House , Jess Gonchor, the movie’s production designer, made 10 visits to the property. He spent days with Jan Turnquist, the executive director of Orchard House, taking in the home’s dimensions, paint colors, and other design details. “It’s amazing,” Turnquist says. “They made up a perfect replica and I thought it was just beautiful.”

This year, Turnquist estimates that the number of visitors from all over the world has tripled, even during the typically slow winter season. “I think the movie has gotten such a positive reaction that it’s just made a lot of people feel very happy when they come,” Turnquist says. “I mean, the atmosphere in the house is truly joyful. The people who are visiting are smiling.” 

A look inside Orchard House

For fans of any adaptation of Little Women , a visit to Orchard House is almost like coming home or checking in on an old friend. The tour of the home begins at the top of the staircase in Alcott’s bedroom. Though she did not move into Orchard House until she was in her 20s, Alcott spent a great deal of time in her bedchamber, particularly after she returned to Concord in 1862, seriously ill after serving as a nurse in the Civil War. 

Alcott’s sister May— a famous artist in her own right —painted owls on the walls and mantle of Louisa’s room because they were her favorite bird; she hoped they would bring Louisa comfort and inspiration. The room itself is simply furnished but cozy, featuring a wooden sleigh bed, a wash basin, and embroidery threads and tools. The famous half-moon-shaped desk, where Alcott wrote Little Women in 1868, was built by her father.

Alcott based the character of Jo March on herself, weaving in her own struggles and experiences as a female writer in the 19th century. The three remaining March sisters were inspired by Alcott’s real life siblings, May, Anna, and Lizzie.

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The next stop on the tour is May’s bedroom, where she was permitted to draw on the walls. Most surfaces in the room, from the window frame to the closet, are covered in drawings of everything from angels to Roman soldiers. Several of her framed paintings hang in the room. Louisa’s parents, Bronson and Abigail Alcott, had a large room across the hall from their daughters’. Today it houses their eldest daughter Anna’s wedding dress, as well as a passageway to the nursery. Anna was married in Orchard House and moved back into the home after her husband died in 1870.

On the ground floor, visitors are guided through May’s painting studio, where the original cast of her foot is on display. Next to the family’s modest kitchen is a dining room that doubles as a gallery for many of May’s paintings, including one that was exhibited at the prestigious Paris Salon in 1877. Though Louisa’s sister Lizzie died shortly before the Alcotts moved into Orchard House, her presence looms large in the home; her melodeon still sits in the dining room next to the back staircase. 

The front parlor, used for entertaining, features a piano and other musical instruments, as well as board games. This was the room where the Alcott sisters put on plays for family and friends. Bronson’s study is on the other side of the ground floor and stands as a testament to his love of philosophy, literature, and free thinking; numerous bookshelves include titles from great authors, including his own daughter. 

Beyond Little Women

Unlike many historical homes that have been preserved to show what life was like for the upper classes, Orchard House provides a glimpse into the everyday lives of an ordinary family. “[The Alcotts] were not in any way wealthy, certainly, and even to call them middle class might have been an exaggeration,” Turnquist says. Rather, she says they were “genteel poor,” meaning that although the family didn’t have money themselves, they did have wealthy relatives who could give them hand-me-downs and access to other resources. 

Though Little Women may be the primary draw to Orchard House, the property also showcases Bronson’s work as a transcendentalist and education reformer. Any money the Alcott family did have went to fund Bronson’s private schools, which Turnquist says were about a century ahead of their time. In addition to refusing to employ corporal punishment and allowing students to ask questions and be active participants in the learning process, Bronson was also the first educator in Boston to permit an African American student to enroll in his class. Refusing to sacrifice his ideals for the chance to remain financially solvent, Bronson saw many of his schools close, losing a lot of money in the process. 

The Alcott family moved 20 times before 1857, when Bronson purchased 12 acres of land with a dilapidated manor house on the property for $945. “Orchard House itself was really thrown in for free when the property was bought because it was in horrible condition,” Turnquist says. “Everyone thought it would be torn down, but it was the only thing he could afford. They were really salvaging something that someone else would consider trash.”

Bronson couldn’t bear to tear down the once-grand house, which was built in the 1600s. He spent a year fixing up the house—surrounded by 12 acres of apple orchards—before moving his family into what he named Orchard House. The family received castoffs from wealthy relatives, such as rolls of wallpaper or old carpet, and over the years, Louisa continued to make improvements to the house. 

Transcendentalists and tourists

Leaders of the transcendentalist movement, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, were frequent visitors. Emerson supported Bronson’s idea for the Concord School of Philosophy, one of the first adult education programs in the country. The school, open to anyone who wanted to learn—including women—first met in Bronson’s study in Orchard House, then later moved to a barn-like structure on the property, which still stands today. 

“He wanted it to look very rustic, because one of the tenants of the transcendentalist thinking was that nature was the way you find the ‘oversoul,’ and anything that could look more rustic and natural was more suitable for that kind of a gathering,” Turnquist says. 

The Alcotts remained in Orchard House until 1877, when Bronson sold it to William Torrey Harris, a fellow philosopher, educator, and co-founder of the Concord School of Philosophy. Harris was unable to spend much time at Orchard House, and the home fell into disrepair. Not wanting to see the home torn down, the Alcott’s next-door neighbor, author Harriett Lothrop, purchased the property. With the help of the Concord Women’s Club, Lothrop founded a house museum which opened to the public in 1911. Anna’s sons donated much of the family’s furniture and belongings back to the museum and today, approximately 80 percent of the furnishings are original to the Alcott family. 

Though Orchard House has become a popular destination, Turnquist welcomes the influx in visitors. “Just come with a little bit of flexibility and know that we are delighted to have visitors,” she says. “We just love it.” 

Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House is open seven days a week year-round. Hours vary by season.

Meet the Authors

Elizabeth Yuko

Dr. Elizabeth Yuko is a bioethicist and writer, as well as an adjunct professor of ethics at Fordham University. She has written for numerous publications and has given a TEDX talk on The Golden Girls and bioethics.

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Louisa May Alcott is My Passion

Begun in 2010, this blog offers analysis and reflection by Susan Bailey on the life, works and legacy of Louisa May Alcott and her family. Susan is an active member and supporter of the Louisa May Alcott Society, the Fruitlands Museum and Louisa May Alcott's Orchard House.

Virtual tour of Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House well worth the price of admission

These digital tours are a means of keeping Orchard House afloat as they depend upon tourism to meet the costs of keeping up the historic house museum. The latest Little Women movie had brought scores of new visitors until the virus shut things down. Now you can help to support orchard house while being able to take a personal tour. See below for details from Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House website. I took the tour and I loved it.

All this for only $10 —  less than the cost of admission!

So far, our Virtual Visit Videos have been viewed by people across the United States as well as in Japan, Costa Rica, and New Zealand!  Educators can plan to share their computer screens during online learning sessions to watch these videos with their students, while “armchair travelers” can practically feel like they are here — and even linger on images of rooms and artifacts.

To gain access to this exclusive bundle, please visit our  Vimeo On Demand site

There is more …

I encourage you to bookmark this page: https://louisamayalcott.org/digital-discovery and check back frequently. There will be many other virtual opportunities to visit Orchard House. I am particularly looking forward to the series on various archives that we don’t usually get to see.

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Tickets & prices Louisa May Alcott's Orchard House

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Admission prices & discounts for tickets to Louisa May Alcott's Orchard House in Concord

The following overview lists the admission prices and various discounts and discount codes for a visit to Louisa May Alcott's Orchard House in Concord . All prices are displayed per age group or reduced rate group. You can also directly book your discounted online ticket for the Louisa May Alcott's Orchard House here, if available, or make a reservation to reserve a timeslot if applicable.

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A Trip to Boston’s Literary District: Visiting Louisa May Alcott’s Beacon Hill Haunts

• August 2, 2021
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• 4 minute read

By Hannah White

Alcott has had a resurgence in popularity recently after the 2019 film adaptation of Little Women starring Saoirse Ronan, Florence Pugh, and Emma Watson–to name just some of the all-star cast–was released and received critical acclaim . After watching this film last year, I developed a newfound interest in the author’s life, because though it is considered a work of fiction, Little Women is categorized as heavily autobiographical with Josephine “Jo” March, the novel’s heroine, representing Alcott herself. 

The 2019 film focuses on the March sisters’ coming-of-age years. Jo, a tomboy like Alcott, is left feeling as though the strong bond between her and her sisters is torn apart after oldest Meg marries and Beth dies of scarlet fever. Jo is strongly against marriage in a world where women struggle to be anything without a husband, and when her closest friend and neighbor Laurie professes his love for her and proposes, she refuses his offer. Alcott herself said :

 “I am more than half-persuaded that I am a man’s soul put by some freak of nature into a woman’s body … because I have fallen in love with so many pretty girls and never once the least bit with any man.”

Alcott has mused that every boy she knew claimed that they were who inspired the character of Laurie, but she writes in her letters that he was not an American boy at all but a Polish one whom she met abroad in 1865. 

In one of her letters , Alcott writes, “Began the second part of “Little Women.” I can do a chapter a day, and in a month I mean to be done. A little success is so inspiring that I now find my “Marches” sober, nice people, and as I can launch into the future, my fancy has more play.” Characteristically, she continues: “Girls write to ask who the little women marry, as if that was the only end and aim of a woman’s life. I won’t marry Jo to Laurie to please anyone.”

As I began my walk up the cobblestone streets of Beacon Hill just as the sun was beginning to set, the lampposts began to light up the unusually quiet streets, so secluded from the nearby hustle and bustle of the rest of the city. I made my way to 20 Pinckney Street and felt the surrealness of this moment as I came across the address, which is now a private residence, marked by a plaque that explained the literary significance of this place.

Alcott lived in a rented room on the third floor of this residence, where she resided when her first book of short stories Flower Fables was published in 1854 when she was 22, the same age I am as I stand at the base of the steps she once walked on. The residence itself is like most of the homes on this street, a quaint brick beauty featuring window boxes lush with greenery.

Though she eventually left Boston to return home to Concord (join LT on our trip to Concord this Fall!), she returned toward the end of her life, purchasing a beautiful five-bedroom Greek Revival style home on 10 Louisburg Square –which I also visited–just a short walk from her previous Boston residence. She moved there after the death of her mother and sister May, and lived there with her ailing father and May’s infant daughter Lulu, who was named for Louisa, and remained until her death in 1888 at the age of 56, just two days after her father passed.

Alcott wrote her first and last published works while living in these homes. She leaves behind her works that have immortalized the beautiful story of her times with her family and are a testament to the importance of sisterhood in her life. Visiting these places brought me closer to an author whose work I admire greatly, and whose legacy will forever be etched in my mind and the minds of so many others.

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• little women
• Louisa May Alcott

Hannah White Hannah

Hannah White is a contributing writer at Literary Traveler. She received her Master's of Arts degree in English from Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts. Her work has been published in Fourth Genre, Sundog Lit, Brevity, and elsewhere. She was a '22 Pushcart Prize nominee. She is an academic editor in the greater Boston area.

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Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio: Everything You Need to Know About the Architect's First Home

All products featured on Architectural Digest are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

For many architecture buffs, the very first stop on a trip to Oak Park, Illinois, is the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio, the architect’s primary residence from 1889 until 1909. Everyday, visitors from across the world travel to the quiet Chicago suburb, which today has the highest concentration of Wright buildings. While in the area, a visit to Wright’s own Oak Park home and studio offers the opportunity to see where many of these structures were designed and how the legendary architect himself lived. Before setting up shop at Taliesin in Wisconsin and later Taliesin West in Arizona, Wright was at work establishing himself and figuring out his distinctive architectural eye in Oak Park. Below, everything you need to know about the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio.

History of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Home and Studio

At age 22 in 1889, Wright was a budding architect and newly married to his first wife, Catherine Lee Tobin Wright. He was working for the architecture firm Adler & Sullivan and still years away from taking on his first independent commission and opening his own practice. With money borrowed from his boss, Louis Sullivan, he built a home for himself and his wife. In its first iteration, the residence was modest in size, with a primary bedroom, nursery, and work space. In 1895, the first major addition was completed, a project that included reconfiguring the downstairs to allow for a larger dining room and a new maid’s room. Upstairs, the playroom was added and the workspace was divided into two bedrooms for their growing family—by the fall of that year, they had welcomed four of their six children.

The playroom in the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio

Wright left Adler & Sullivan in 1893 after a dispute surrounding his independent projects, and he opened his own practice that same year. In 1898, after working in downtown Chicago offices for years, he built a studio wing in his home, which would allow him to be closer to his family and his commissions, many of which were being built in Oak Park. Attached to the home via a passageway, but with a separate entrance on Chicago Avenue, this addition included an office, double-height drafting room with a balcony on the upper level, a reception hall, and a library.

“This is where he really began his architectural career,” Frank Lloyd Wright Trust curator and director of interpretation Sarah Holian says. “You get to see not only how he created a home for his family—he had six children in what is really quite a modest-size home—but also where so many of the early Prairie designs that he’s known for were created in the adjacent studio.”

Wright left Oak Park and separated from Tobin Wright in 1909. Before leaving, he divided the studio and the home, allowing Tobin Wright and the children to live in the studio wing and rent out the house for income. Wright sold the property in 1925 and later owners divided the building into six units and neglected to preserve the historically significant property.

The restoration of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Home and Studio

In 1974, the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio Foundation and the National Trust for Historic Preservation bought the property and set to work restoring the structure. The organizations strived to bring it back to the state it was in 1909 before it had been subdivided. According to the Chicago Tribune , the process took 13 years and $2.5 million, not adjusted for inflation. The project involved removing modern updates, like shag carpeting, and restoring water-damaged walls, among other adjustments. The studio’s foundation was stabilized and a basement was dug out, providing a space to store the Trust’s archive and collections.

Wright’s drafting room in his Oak Park studio

“There is no question in my mind that, of all of my grandfather’s buildings that have been restored, the Home and Studio has received the finest restoration,” the late Eric Lloyd Wright, architect and grandson of Frank Lloyd Wright, wrote in the foreword to Building A Legacy: The Restoration of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Home and Studio .

Architectural details of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Home and Studio

The original home—first built in 1889, then expanded in 1895—is defined by its high-pitched roof. This element makes it an outlier among Wright’s most well-known residences, whether Prairie or Usonian, which Wright designed later in his career and generally have a flatter profile. “I think people are surprised when they visit for the first time that his home isn’t a Prairie-style home, which he’s so well known for in the Chicago area and certainly for his early career,” Holian says. “It’s a shingle-style structure, which I think is surprising to many people when they come to visit if they haven’t seen photos.”

Like the residence wing, the studio wing is clad in cedar shingles and brick, creating a sense of visual continuity between the additions and the original house. Located on opposite sides of the studio wing, the library is octagonal in shape and the drafting room’s upper section is octagonal too, giving the structure a unique geometric façade.

The exterior of the residential portion of the property.

One of the most striking architectural elements of the home is the playroom. The space features a barrel-vaulted ceiling topped by skylights filtered with wood grilles and a mural designed by Wright and painted by Charles Corwin. Accessed through a relatively dark hallway, it’s an early example of Wright’s affinity for “compression and release,” in which a relatively cramped and dim area gives way to a spacious, bright room.

As Holian points out, barrel-vaulted ceilings are just one of many details in the house’s design that would go on to appear in Wright’s later commissioned work—in this case, in the Dana-Thomas House in Springfield, Illinois. “It was his living laboratory, [Wright was] trying to see what designs worked in place as he was living through them,” Holian says.

Interior design inside Frank Lloyd Wright’s Home and Studio

Natural materials and earth tones are employed throughout the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio, with green hues in particular used in light fixtures, upholstery, and stained glass. Detailed woodwork is a constant, and it’s particularly crucial in the living areas and studio. Both the playroom and the primary bedroom feature custom murals, and the latter features a frieze on each of the side walls too. “Wright never really said that many other artists inspired him, with the exception of Louis Sullivan,” Holian says. “One of the really wonderful tributes to Sullivan in the home is a stencil on the primary bedroom wall that Wright borrowed from the Auditorium Building that he worked on with Sullivan, so we see that very direct influence there.”

Historic photo from the late 1890s shows the house’s dining chairs.

Much of the furniture and artwork that’s in the home nowadays are authentic pieces from when Wright inhabited the space, donated or acquired from the Wright and Tobin family beginning in the ’70s. For example, per Building A Legacy, the original dining chairs were at Taliesin in Wisconsin when the restoration of the Oak Park home and studio began. The committee wrote to Olgivanna Wright, Wright’s widow and then president of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, who agreed to donate six of the chairs to the home. Years later, the remaining two dining chairs were brought to Oak Park too.

Frequently Asked Questions

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Home and Studio is a house museum located in Oak Park, Illinois. Wright himself lived at the property from 1889 to 1909. Many of Wright’s Prairie-style buildings were designed at the studio space on the property, including the Robie House and Unity Temple. The home has been open to the public for tours since 1974 and it was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1976.

The home was built in 1889 and frequent updates were made by Wright throughout his 20 years living and working at the property.

There are multiple different tours available at the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio. The guided interior tour takes 60 minutes and costs $20 as of this writing. The Inside and Out tour, which combines the guided tour of the interiors with a self-guided audio tour of the Historic District, runs 1 hour and 45 minutes and costs $30. Once a year, the Trust hosts the Wright Plus Housewalk in Oak Park, walking tour ($125 for the public and $90 for trust members). The event offers the opportunity to see inside architecturally significant public buildings and privately owned homes that are otherwise off limits to the public, in addition to the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio. Tours can be booked directly on the Trust’s website .

The Frank Lloyd Wright Trust has been the sole owner of the architect’s Oak Park home and studio since 2012.

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'Tis the season for 18 Christmas films featuring stars like Candace Cameron Bure, Mario Lopez, and Gladys Knight.

Emlyn Travis is a news writer at  Entertainment Weekly  with over five years of experience covering the latest in entertainment. A proud Kingston University alum, Emlyn has written about music, fandom, film, television, and awards for multiple outlets including MTV News,  Teen Vogue , Bustle, BuzzFeed,  Paper Magazine , Dazed, and NME. She joined EW in August 2022.

As summer comes to a close, Great American Family is already focused on the most wonderful time of the year: the holiday season!

Now Entertainment Weekly can exclusively reveal the premiere dates for the cable network’s fourth annual Great American Christmas franchise, which will feature 18 star-studded new films sure to bring a hefty dose of yuletide cheer to all starting Oct. 19. (Move over, Halloween and Thanksgiving!) 

The list includes not one, not two, but three movies starring Candace Cameron Bure , following the Full House alum as she embarks on a magical holiday road trip ( A Christmas Less Traveled ), inherits a maple sugar farm ( Home Sweet Christmas ), and transforms an old lodge into a holiday hotspot ( Let It Snow ). Elsewhere, Mario Lopez and his wife, Courtney Lopez, find their dreams come true in Once Upon a Christmas Wish , and the phenomenal Gladys Knight stars in a holiday adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's classic novel Little Women . And that's just the tip of the iceberg — surprise films will also be added throughout the season.

Find out everything you need to know about Great American Family's holiday movie lineup below.

Christmas in Scotland

Great American Family

Premieres: Oct. 19, 8 p.m. ET/7 p.m. CT

Cast: Jill Winternitz and Dominic Watters

Official description: "A New York installation designer helps a small Scottish community create a dazzling light display to win the Best Christmas Village festival. The designer is forced to work with a wealthy heir who doesn't like Christmas, though feelings may change if the pair succeeds in creating joy for the community."

A Christmas Castle Proposal

Premieres: Oct. 20, 8 p.m. ET/7 p.m. CT

Cast: Rhiannon Fish and Mitchell Bourke

Official description: "Olivia, a commoner, travels with Prince Alexander to his family's magical palace, Torovia, so their families can spend a first Christmas together. The couple's plans for an enchanted Christmas are threatened by comedic mishaps caused by cultural differences between the families."

A Vintage Christmas

Premieres: Oct. 26, 8 p.m. ET/7 p.m. CT

Cast: Merritt Patterson and Christopher Russell

Official description: "A dedicated preservationist battles a developer’s ambitions to tear down a historic post office with ties to her family. The choice of old versus new threatens to divide the small town unless there is a solution for the greater good of all concerned."

The Fabric of Christmas

Premieres: Nov. 2, 8 p.m. ET/7 p.m. CT

Cast: Ferelith Young and Harmon Walsh

Official description: "Firefighter Liam and quilting teacher Amy come together to make the perfect quilt for Liam's sister's Christmas wedding. Two headstrong people discover the importance of putting personal differences aside to create what is most important at Christmas."

A Royal Christmas Ballet

Premieres: Nov. 9, 8 p.m. ET/7 p.m. CT

Cast: Brittany Underwood and Jonathan Stoddard

Official description: "A retired ballerina is pressed into service working with a visiting team of royal ambassadors to put on the season's performance of The Nutcracker and finds herself center stage in an unexpected Christmas romance."

A Christmas Less Traveled

Premieres: Nov. 16, 8 p.m. ET/7 p.m. CT

Cast: Candace Cameron Bure and Eric Johnson

Official description: "A local business owner finds an audio cassette in the player of her recently departed dad's classic red truck. The message instructs Desi to go on a holiday road trip down memory lane, where she meets a man who needs her help and who offers help in return."

A Little Women's Christmas

Premieres: Nov. 23, 8 p.m. ET/7 p.m. CT

Cast: Trevor Donovan, Jen Lilley, Jillian Murray, Laura Osnes, Julia Reilly, Jesse Hutch, and Gladys Knight

Official description: "A modern retelling of Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel."

Sleigh Bells and Sugar Plums

Premieres: Nov. 24, 8 p.m. ET/7 p.m. CT

Cast: Jill Wagner and Jesse Hutch

Official description: "A historian seeks inspiration for her next project in her family's hometown of Aurora, which is famous for experiencing the Northern Lights. While there, she bonds with a local tour guide who shows her the town's Christmas traditions and witnesses a harbinger of miracles to come."

I Heard the Bells

Sight & Sound Films

Premieres: commercial free, one-night-only presentation on Nov. 28, 8 p.m. ET/7 p.m. CT

Cast: Stephen Atherholt, Jonathan Blair, and Rachel Day Hughes

Official description: " I Heard the Bells is the inspiring true story behind the beloved Christmas carol and the song's author, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Known as America's Poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow leads an idyllic life... until the day his world is shattered by tragedy. With a nation divided by the Civil War and his family torn apart, Henry puts down his pen, silenced by grief. But it's the sound of Christmas morning that reignites the poet's lost voice as he discovers the resounding hope of rekindled faith."

A Cinderella Christmas Ball

Premieres: Nov. 29, 8 p.m. ET/7 p.m. CT

Cast: Danica McKellar and Oliver Rice

Official description: "With only the Internet, a plane ticket, and a lifelong determination to find her birth family, Chelsea travels to royal hamlet Havenshire at Christmas. Along the way, Chelsea sneaks into a castle, teaches a stubborn prince how to dance, and looks to be in the perfect place when the bells toll Christmas Eve."

Wreathmaker Christmas

Premieres: Nov. 30, 8 p.m. ET/7 p.m. CT

Cast: Kristin Wollett and Casey Elliott

Official description: "A wreath maker slips on ice and injures her arm, which puts her holiday wreath deliveries in jeopardy until a selfless neighbor steps up to keep her business afloat."

Home Sweet Christmas

Premieres: Dec. 1, 8 p.m. ET/7 p.m. CT

Cast: Candace Cameron Bure and Cameron Mathison

Official description: "Two former childhood friends reunite after a beloved family member passes, leaving the future of his magical maple sugar farm in their hands."

Once Upon a Christmas Wish

Premieres: Dec. 7, 8 p.m. ET/7 p.m. CT

Cast: Mario Lopez and Courtney Lopez

Official description: "A local mayor discovers his childhood Christmas wishes are coming true. With his childhood friend, the pair can inspire residents to showcase the town's warmth and values while pushing back a major developer's desire to take the community in a different direction."

Let It Snow

Premieres: Dec. 8, 8 p.m. ET/7 p.m. CT

Cast: Candace Cameron Bure, Jesse Hutch, and Alan Thicke

Official description: "An executive evaluates her company's property and begins to draw up plans for transforming the rustic old lodge into a hot tourist attraction."

Get Him Back for Christmas

Premieres: Dec. 14, 8 p.m. ET/7 p.m. CT

Cast: Alexa PenaVega and Carlos PenaVega, with special appearances by the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, Mario Lopez , Victoria Jackson , and Natasha Bure

Official description: "Bella made it big in music. Jack stayed behind in his hometown working at the Salvation Army to help his family after his dad passed. Bella returns home after a heartbreaking split with her chart-topping singing partner and asks Jack to write the perfect song to get her boyfriend back."

A Shelter and Season's Greetings

Premieres: Dec. 15, 8 p.m. ET/7 p.m. CT

Cast: Ash Tsai and Eric Guilmette

Official description: "Caleb is injured in the Army and recovers through help from shelter therapy dogs. As a sign of thanks, Caleb returns home to help Amber run the local shelter and, in the process, discovers his feelings for Amber go beyond gratitude."

Christmas by Candelight

Premieres: Dec. 21, 8 p.m. ET/7 p.m. CT

Cast: Erin Agostino and Harmon Walsh

Official description: "Juliet pitches Christmas candles to her boss to earn a promotion and enlists the help of a candle store owner, Tom, who refuses at first but reluctantly agrees when he realizes the money will help make his daughter's Christmas wish come true."

Coupled Up for Christmas

Premieres: Dec. 22, 8 p.m. ET/7 p.m. CT

Cast: Sara Canning and Marcus Rosner

Official description: "Two heartbroken strangers pretend to be dating others to win the affection of their true soulmates."

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The Kitchen

In Louisa May Alcott's journal of 1860, she wrote, "All of the philosophy in our house is not in the study, a good deal is in the kitchen, where a fine old lady thinks high thoughts and does good deeds while she cooks and scrubs."  The Alcott women all worked in the Kitchen preparing and preserving food and doing laundry, but Mr. Alcott spent time here as well, making it an efficient workspace.  Innovations he implemented include a hot water boiler/reservoir and a clothes drying rack.  Other original features include the soapstone sink that was purchased by Louisa, a variety of kitchen implements and cooking tools, and the hutch table.  The Alcotts were also fortunate to have running water installed in the mid-1870s, but their well is still visible via a trap door in the Kitchen floor.  May Alcott even commandeered her mother's bread board to practice the art of pyrography on it.

Kitchen Gallery

The dining room.

The Alcotts were vegetarians and harvested fruits and vegetables from gardens and orchards they tended on the twelve acres surrounding Orchard House.  Mrs. Alcott's family china, portraits of Elizabeth and Louisa, and paintings by May are displayed in this room along with other family furnishings, most memorably Elizabeth's melodeon (small reed organ).  Of vital importance to the family and their guests at the dining table were mealtime conversations that addressed abolition, women's suffrage, child labor, and many other social reforms.  The Alcott sisters also used the Dining Room as their stage, performing home-made theatricals for neighbors and friends assembled in the adjoining Parlor during their weekly evening Open House.

Dining Room Gallery

This more formal room used primarily for entertaining and special family events is decorated with earth-toned wallpaper and a green patterned carpet that contrasts with the burgundy-themed Study across the hall.  Arched niches were built by Mr. Alcott to display busts of his favorite philosophers, Socrates and Plato, but during the 1860s, statuettes by John Rogers, depicting important themes and events of the Civil War, were often displayed instead.  Family portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Alcott and watercolors by May -- along with her pen and ink drawing of Moses on the fireboard -- enliven the room.  On May 23, 1860, the thirtieth wedding anniversary of Mr. and Mrs. Alcott, eldest daughter Anna married John Bridge Pratt beneath an arbor in this room.  Years later, Louisa recalled this first family wedding and described it in Little Women as the marriage of "Meg March" and "John Brooke."

Parlor Gallery

Louisa may alcott bedchamber.

A room of her own had always been a priority for Louisa May Alcott.  With her often turbulent emotions, active imagination, and serious pre-occupation with her family's financial welfare, a haven into which she could escape to find the solitude and freedom to write was indispensable.  When the family first moved into Orchard House, Louisa's father not only built a bookcase cupboard for her, but the half-moon writing desk between the two front windows as well.  It was at this desk in 1868 that Louisa wrote Little Women -- a book that would change the course of American literature as well as the Alcotts' lives.  When Louisa was recuperating from typhoid pneumonia she contracted during her service as a Civil War nurse, her youngest sister May painted a panel of calla lilies and nasturtiums beside the writing desk to cheer her; May later rendered a baby owl on Louisa's mantel and the oil painting of an owl that hangs on the outer wall by Louisa's bed.

Louisa May Alcott Room Gallery

May alcott bedchamber.

The youngest Alcott daughter -- and model for "Amy March" in Little Women -- was a talented artist in real life as well as in fiction.  In addition to more traditional sketches and paintings, May's bluish-grey bedroom still contains unique drawings of mythological and biblical figures on the woodwork, walls, and doors, as well as original wallpaper, a vaulted ceiling, and bracketed shelves to hold flower vases.  The room is furnished with a set of painted cottage furniture typical of the mid-19th Century.  There is also a trunk that contains costumes made by the Alcott sisters which they wore during performances of their home-made theatricals in the Parlor.

May Alcott Room Gallery

Parents' bedchamber.

The master bedroom reflects Mrs. Alcott's taste and contains many of her possessions, including family paintings and photographs, household furnishings, and handmade quilts.  In later years, Mrs. Alcott often spent many of her free moments here reading, writing in her journal, and having tea.  Several of May Alcott's highly acclaimed copies of Joseph Turner's landscapes also adorn the walls in this room. A small passageway leads to the Nursery that was added onto Orchard House in 1870. 

Parents' Room Gallery

The nursery.

This room was added in 1870 after newly-widowed Anna Alcott Pratt decided to come back to live at Orchard House with her two sons, Frederick and John Jr.  Portraits of Anna, her husband, and their two sons are in the room, along with two rare lithographs of children done by noted artist Lilly Martin Spencer.  Displayed on the back wall is “The Mansion of Happiness,” a popular 19th Century board game that was the first produced by Parker Brothers in Salem, Massachusetts.  Many of the toys, dolls, and games in the Nursery were donated by Anna's sons and May’s daughter, Lulu, when Orchard House was preparing to open to the public as an historic site in 1911. 

Nursery Gallery

"If in Emerson's study perpetual twilight reigns," wrote a visitor to Orchard House in 1874, "in Alcott's it is always noon.  The great sun shines in it all day, the great fireplace roars, and the warm crimson hangings temper the sunlight and reflect the firelight. Quaint mottoes and pictures hang on the walls."  Mr. Alcott's books fill the shelves, the room is furnished with his desks, chairs, and a handmade revolving bookcase, while the walls hold images of his friends, neighbors, and sources of inspiration -- Emerson, Thoreau, Sanborn, Hawthorne, John Brown, Thomas Carlyle, and his own mother, Anna Bronson Alcox.  Here, Mr. Alcott could also sit and gaze upon a beautiful portrait of his youngest daughter May, who spent her last years in Europe.  In 1879, the Concord Summer School of Philosophy, an adult education series created by Mr. Alcott, first met in this room until a larger building adjacent to Orchard House was constructed the next year.  A bust of Mr. Alcott in the niche of this room was carved by noted American sculptor Daniel Chester French, who was one of May's early art students. 

Study Gallery

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