Walt Whitman in Huntington Station, Long Island, NY

The Walt Whitman Birthplace State Historic Site and Interpretive Center. It was built by his carpenter father (also Walt Whitman) in about 1816 and the future poet was born here in 1819. He left when he was four years old.

The house as it was in 1903, published in the monthly periodical The Four-Track News in August 1904.

As this beautifully preserved house looks today, with the well in the foreground.

And there were no restrictions on indoor photography. This is the ground (or first) floor sitting room with fireplace and cupboard below. The furniture is of the period, but none of it is from the original house.

The stairs, showing the odd small top step.

The kitchen.

The exit door.

'TO MARK THE BIRTHPLACE OF
WALT WHITMAN
THE OLD GRAY POET
BORN MARCH 31, 1819.

Erected by the Colonial Society
of Huntington in 1905.'

'WALT WHITMAN
BY JOHN GIANNOTTI

NEW HISTORY! NEW HEROES! I PROJECT YOU YOU!
VISIONS OF POETS! ONLY YOU REALLY LAST! SWEEP ON!

WALT WHITMAN

WALT WHITMAN, MY SUN!
LIGHT MY WAY, SHINE ON FOREVER!

DAISAKU IKEDA

COMMEMORATING THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF DAISAKU IKEDA'S
VISIT TO NEW YORK ON OCTOBER 13, 1960'

Bust by Justin C. Mayer.

'Walt Whitman

Warren Wheelock, c. 1940
Carved from butternut wood

Gift of Oscar Lion'

'Poets to Come

Poets to come, orators, singers, musicians to come!

Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for,

But you, a new brood, native, athletic,

continental, never before known,

Arouse! for you must justify me.

Leaves of Grass, 1855'

Whitman taught school from the age of seventeen, beginning his four-year period in the summer of 1836. He taught in a number of places and this is his desk from Woodbury, Long Island, from 1840. In Smithtown the schoolhouse only had one room and he had eighty-five students. He became a strong advocate of educational reform.

Whitman was also known for having published a local paper called The Long Islander. This is a similar type of press he used to print his newspaper.

Whitman's original printing materials.

'Walt Whitman as a Young Man

Joy Buba, 1953
Plasticene bust
Gift of the artist'

'Walt Whitman as an Old Man

Joy Buba, 1953
Plasticene bust
Gift of the artist'

CONCORD, Mass'tts, July 21, 1855.

DEAR SIR, I am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of "LEAVES OF GRASS." I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed. I am very happy in reading it, as great power makes us happy. It meets the demand I am always making of what seemed the sterile and stingy nature, as if too much handiwork, or too much lymph in the temperament, were making our western wits fat and mean.

I give you joy of your free and brave thought. I have great joy in it. I find incomparable things said incomparably well, as they must be. I find the courage of treatment which so delights us, and which large perception only can inspire.

I greet you at the beginning of a great career, which yet must have had a long foreground somewhere, for such a start. I rubbed my eyes a little to see if this sunbeam were no illusion; but the solid sense of the book is a sober certainty. It has the best merits, namely, of fortifying and encouraging.
I did not know, until I last night saw the book advertised in a newspaper, that I could trust the name as real and available for a post-office. I wish to see my benefactor, and have felt much like striking my tasks and visiting New-York to pay you my respects.

R. W. EMERSON.

I have to add that the staff here were extremely helpful and even gave me full directions for the drive back to JFK: unfortunately, this was our final day.