Built in our little town of Concord over 350 years ago is the Orchard House, so named for the 40 apple trees that once grew on the property. It was home to the Alcott family, who lived here from 1858 to 1877. One of the daughters, Louisa May Alcott, sat in one of the rooms of the home at a half-moon desk where she wrote the famous novel Little Women, a semi-autobiographical tale of her childhood with her sisters. The home played a large part in the American philosophy of transcendentalism. Louisa May Alcott’s father, Bronson Alcott, was a philosopher and educator who joined the transcendental movement with scholars like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. In 1879, Bronson Alcott helped fulfill his progressive education goals by founding the Concord Summer School of Philosophy and Literature and constructing a dedicated wooden building for the school on the Orchard House property.

It has been more than twenty years since I last visited, and I was wondering if I would find any changes. I did not, which I suppose is the whole point of historical preservation.