As summertime is upon us, with the overall fair conditions for sightseeing, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, I’m sharing one of my favorite places on earth, Orchard House, the home of the author of Little Women, Louisa May Alcott. I’ve been wanting to blog about my visit for months! With the school year over, I finally have the time!

I hope every Little Women fan who reads this gets to go tour it! Such a visit will make your life more magical. I got to go there last year as part of my visit to see my sister in Maine. (You can read about that miracle here.) It was a dream come true for sure! I planted the seed of the dream in my mind, when years ago, I saw the trailer below, for the documentary called “Orchard House: Home of Little Women.” Since then, I’ve seen the full documentary and love it. You can watch in amazon.com here.

To tour Orchard House with one of my sisters, one of my daughters, one of my sons, two nieces, a son-in-law, and two of my grandchildren was the icing on the cake of the visit. If only my mom, other sister, other daughter, other nieces, sisters-in-law and daughters-in-law, all could have been there it would have been perfect! I remember so fondly my mom reading Little Women to my sisters and me when we lived close to New England, in upstate New York. We even lived in a wooden two-story gabled house kind of like Orchard House, a far cry from the brick one-story rambler we had moved from in Utah the previous winter of 1979.

We toured the House on Thursday, August 15, 2024. (After my visit to NYC, Boston and Maine.) We got there almost an hour early, so it was almost embarrassing to be seen as overeager fangirls with a few somewhat-interested-but-mostly-feeling dragged-along token males in tow. We left my sister’s home in Maine shortly after 7 AM. With her leaden foot and her expert weaving through Boston rush-hour traffic, in a 15-seater Ford van, no less!, we arrived around 9:15 AM. It didn’t open until 10. I didn’t think ahead about calculating the ratios of hours in car to size of my bladder to amount of liquid drunk before and during the trip, so let’s just say I was more than eager to find a restroom as soon as we parked in the mini-parking lot up front. I hope we didn’t appear like yokels falling out of a turnip truck as I burst out of the car and walked as well as I could with a full bladder up to the office/gift shop, on the side of the house, converted from the Alcotts’ lean-to. The workers/employees/volunteers (I’m not sure if they are paid) were super kind and gracious, immediately directing me to the restroom, which is in the Museum Store (gift shop), even though the place wasn’t officially opened up yet.

1. So that’s the first thing to know before you go, that the restroom is inside the museum store, on the side of the building. It is a tiny room, single use restroom. Even if you arrive before opening time, (within reason) the nice people setting up for the day will let you use it if you are like me and overestimate your bladder capacity on a two-plus hour road trip across a state line to get there.

Here are 10 more things to know before you go to Orchard House, aka the Little Women House, along with a recap of my visit.

2. Why would you want to tour it? Because this home is where Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women. Need I say more?! She wrote the book in only 3 months: May, June, July of 1868 while living in this home. There’s just something indescribable about being in the very place where a great book was written. You can see the very desk, built by her father, where she wrote the book. If she was the J.K. Rowling of her day, which she was, this is like seeing the napkin where J.K. first wrote the basic plot of Harry Potter.

It’s as if you can feel Louisa watching over the place, sending encouraging wishes and confidence to all aspiring authors as they tour her home. Note, this is not the place Louisa lived in as a girl. Most people know that Little Women is a story loosely based on Louisa’s own family. She had three sisters, just like Jo in the book. Jo is modeled after the author, Louisa May, Meg is based on Anna, Beth is based on Elizabeth, and Amy is based on May. In real life Elizabeth died just as Beth died in the book. The family moved into this home when Louisa May was in her 20s, after Beth had died. In Jim Bob Duggar fashion, Bronson took two buildings and put them together to make this home. It was by an orchard of apples, his favorite fruit, so he named it Orchard House. This isn’t just a visitor’s center. It’s a museum full of artifacts and stories, a total rich cheesecake slice of American history!

If you want to know why Little Women is such a great book, read my post here about finding God in Little Women. Then Listen to Sarah Mackenzie’s podcast episode interviewing the executive director of Orchard House, Jan Turnquist here.

If celebrated author L.M. Montgomery of Anne of Green Gables fame made it a point to visit Orchard House, then any aspiring writer should make it a point to visit as well! See the story of Lucy Maud’s visit here.

The home is historic in its own right, not just because the Alcotts lived there. It is amazingly old! It was built in the 1660s and housed five generations of the Hoare family. So, it was almost 200 years old when Bronson Alcott bought it in 1857 along with the 20 acres of apple orchard it sat on. The seller assumed Bronson would tear down the house and build a new one, but in true Bronson fashion, he went against expectations. It also has a cool connection with the local Native Americans who had become Christians and were being persecuted. The Hoare family gave safe shelter to them during a war. Read about all the history here. Because of all this it is a Registered National Historic Landmark.

Plus, it is a remarkable testament to the successful feat of restoring an old home as the Orchard House Documentary shows. People in charge of it had a new foundation put under it to make it last much longer.

3.Where is it? In Concord MA, about a 35 minute drive from Boston. I quote from OH’s website: “Orchard House is located at 399 Lexington Road in Concord, MA, which is accessible via the major routes of MA-128/US-95, MA-2, and MA-62.  The MBTA commuter rail also stops in Concord (Purple Line, to Fitchburg), with Orchard House being an approximately 25-minute walk from the depot on Thoreau Street.  (If possible, please use our street address with a map app on your cell phone or GPS device).”

4. When to go: again, from the website: “From April 1st through October 31st, we are open weekdays and Saturdays from 10 am to 5 pm, and Sundays from 11 am to 5 pm.

“On third Thursdays in June through December 2025, Orchard House will also be open till 8:00 pm as part of Concord’s “Third Thursdays” initiative.  No reservations are required for our tours/events held on these evenings, but tickets may be limited.  Check specific dates on our Events calendar or social media sites for additional details.

“From November 1st through March 31st, we are open weekdays from 11 am to 3:30 pm, Saturdays from 10 am to 5 pm, and Sundays from 1 to 5 pm.  

“Special year-end (Thanksgiving Week – first week in January) Hours of Operation are found here.”

If you are lucky, you might be fortunate enough to happen to visit on a free day. On the day we went, it just so happened to be such a day, when a third-party organization was paying everyone’s admission for the day! The whole group of us saved over $100, hooray! See the sign on the lower left of the home above? That’s the sign saying that “August Adventures” was happening. It meant that admission was free. So positively providential! I don’t know if such a thing will happen again. It’s worth asking on a phone call or email. Just note, at least when I called, I could never get a live person, after multiple calls.

5. What can you expect to see? If visiting in spring or summer, first of all, expect to see a lovely flower garden as you walk up to the office in the museum store to buy your tickets if you didn’t buy them online, or use the restroom after a long road trip, LOL. The entrance to this is on the side of the home. Be sure to take time to behold the beauty of all the flowers, and notice the sections marked by signs for each of the sisters, and how the flowers in each marked section fit each sister.

The garden has a sign with an excerpt from the LW book that tells what flowers each girl planted.

Second, expect the tour to start not in the actual home, but in the outbuilding, a bunch of yards to the west of Orchard House. This is Louisa May’s father’s “School of Philosophy” building. This is where the schoolroom scene of the 2019 version of the LW movie was filmed. Inside the school, you will be shown a video. Bronson used to host meetings here with his Transcendentalist friends.

The video tells the story of Louisa May and her family and her writing of Little Women. Below is an excerpt of the video, featuring Jan Turnquist.

Then you will be escorted by a tour guide into the actual Orchard House. It has two levels. On the ground level, you will first see the kitchen. I loved hearing how Louisa May used some of her earnings from her bestselling book LW to buy a better kitchen sink for her mother, which is still there, which you can see. She yearned to give her mother all the comforts of life that she could. I just love that.

Then you will be taken into the parlor, as well as Bronson Alcott’s study with his actual books. After that, you get to go upstairs. There you will see the bedrooms, including Lousia’s desk, where this lovely sisterly story of family life with its ups and downs, love and laughter, was spun. After the girls’ room you will see the parents’ bedroom and the nursery. This is where the little boys of Anna (Meg in the book) slept. Anna and her boys came to live with the Alcotts after Anna’s husband passed away.

The tour guide said that about 80% of the objects in the home were owned by the Alcotts. Amazing! They and their descendants apparently hadn’t heard of Marie Kondo yet. You will see the boots that LMA wore to be Roderigo, just like Jo in the book, for the play that she wrote and performed with her sisters. You will also May/Amy’s art on the wall because her parents were OK with her drawing on the wall, as well as her framed art, and then of course, Louisa’s desk that her father built for her where she wrote her famous first bestseller.

6. How can you make your visit more fun?

-on your drive to or from OH, listen to some Little Women music! The theme song from the soundtrack of the 2019 movie is here and the soundtrack from the Broadway musical is here. Oh my, the theme song to the 2019 movie is just so gorgeous. It feels like Thanksgiving and Christmas and Valentine’s all rolled up together into a superbly lush, romantic, auditory feast. It’s even called “Orchard House.” So yummy!

-sign the guest book and enjoy reading the lines above your signature seeing where all the other visitors hail from. The guest book and sign were on a table being set up outside when I arrived in my desperate situation. So I signed it later of course.

-scamper on the lawn with kiddos, breathing the fresh clean air of the town of Concord, where the spirit of ’76 took form! Imagine seeing LMA’s niece Lulu (Amy/May’s daughter) and nephews Freddy and Johnny running around.

-see if you can engage the tour guides in a friendly debate about just how feminist LMA was. I just heard this podcast here (sorry I can’t remember which particular episode) from one of my favorite homeschooling mom podcasters, Jennifer Pepito. She said that when she toured OH she felt the tour guide was misrepresenting LMA as an ardent feminist.

-see if you can stump the tour guide with some tough questions about LMA’s life. I so badly wanted to do this but knew it wouldn’t be wise. We were on a tight time schedule, as we were flying out of Boston in a few hours and still wanted to go tour the Revolutionary War battle site of Concord. I knew however longer we spent at OH talking would be less time at the Concord green. So, I bit my tongue and resisted.

Here’s what I would have asked:

“Did LMA ever find love, specifically with a young man in Europe?” (I read about this possibility in a biography about her. So far nobody knows for sure if the relationship was romantic.)

“Did LMA really like Little Women, or did she just think it was a way to make money, one of the books she wrote which she called ‘moral pap for the young’?”

“Did LMA resent the fact that her father never fully provided for his family, and that LMA had to step up and function as ‘husband’ to her mother and ‘father’ to the family by providing for them things that Bronson never did?”

“Why did Bronson not fully provide for his family? Was he mentally ill or just lazy?”

-dress up in old-fashioned clothes like my nieces did when they visited with their cousins on the other side of the family tree, who live in Boston. It was part of a family reunion. They visited OH dressed up, after they had learned some 19th century skills like dancing the Virginia reel and making butter in a butter churn. This is just something fun to do, so please don’t feel like I’m adding a task to do your travel checklist. It just sounds fun, but not if it stresses you out. Jennifer Flanders of flandersfamily.info mentions how her family loves to dress up when they tour historic places. Oh, the fantasies I love to entertain!

-have a picnic on the grounds, or just down the street, across from the Wayside home, where the Alcotts lived before Orchard House. Nathaniel Hawthorne lived there at one point as well as Margaret Sidney, author of Five Little Peppers. This is what we did when we got there so early; we had a brunch, across the street from Wayside on a picnic table.

7. Then here are the things to do before you visit Orchard House:

-first and foremost, read the Little Women book if you haven’t already! That way you will enjoy seeing the house so much more. You will also have more questions to ask the tour guide. The audiobook is below, with text to go with the audio.

-learn to say the “Alcott” name properly. According to Jan Turquist, it’s “All-cut” not “Awl-cot.”

-read picture books aloud to your children about LMA and her life in Concord. Above and below are some.

-read the compilation of letters and journal entries of Louisia May and her mother, Abigail May Alcott. It’s called My Heart is Boundless. My review is here.

-read the biography of Louisa May and her mother, Abigail. My review of that is here.

-watch the movies, at least the 1994 and 2019 versions. The 1994 version is better, but I still enjoy watching the 2019 version, just because it’s pretty. I do, however, have some serious beefs with it. My review of the 2019 version is here. It is definitely not as good as the 1994 version.

The repeated flashbacks in that version is confusing. I pretty much agree with the commenter in the video below about the 2019 version, except I did like the costumes. I’m not wise enough about period costumes and hair to know they did not look authentic. So many people say the casting was perfect for the 2019 version, but I respectfully disagree. I didn’t notice until watching the video below and hearing the commenter pointing it out, but now I agree that Emma Watson did not act or look like the wisest, biggest sister role of Meg. She was not great in that role. Florence Pugh should not have been cast as Amy, as she was too buxom for a 12-year-old and her voice sounded like a male chain smoker!

-read my explanation here of how you can find God in Little Women. God is definitely in the novel but was completely left out in the 2019 movie.

-if I had little girls, I would definitely check out my resources over here. Over there you will find a link to print LW paper dolls, and a link to the Little Women Cookbook. I’d do a unit study of Little Women with my little girls before I went. We would cook every recipe in that book. The authors listed every single dish mentioned in the LW book and found a recipe for it. I hope to do this someday with granddaughters!

-take this fun quiz to see which Little Women sister you are. I was surprised to come up as Jo. I feel more like Meg or Amy.

-check out the Orchard House Facebook page, where you can get the latest news on the House and see videos and photos of the House through the seasons of the year.

8. Anything to beware of? First, it’s best to buy tickets, what the staff calls “timed- entry reservations,” ahead of your desired day of visit. You do that by going online, here, to make sure you can get in. 6 AM is the deadline to buy tickets the day of. They do say they take “walk-ins” if they can accommodate them. Because the home is relatively small, admission is limited to a certain number of people per time slot. This place can’t handle the traffic of Disneyland. When we were there, we had about 20 people in our group, 10 in our family and the others were random strangers. For the day we wanted to go, because it was a free day, we couldn’t buy tickets online ahead of the day.

The website did not explain why. I kept clicking on the day and nothing would happen. It just said it was August Adventures Day and wouldn’t let me reserve tickets. (See August 15 above.) What in the heck did that mean? Did it mean only people who were part of “August Adventures” could attend because AA had reserved the place all day for some exclusive event like a party? The page had no asterisk or footnotes. When I called to ask about that the day before, from Maine, I just kept getting a recording that didn’t answer my question as to why I couldn’t buy reservations. So, we went on faith hoping we would get in, and we were happy to discover admission was free because of August Adventures. An aggravating problem that turned out to be a surprise blessing in the end.

It was a big day when we were there for this event sponsored by OH and this other organization. They had people dressed up, acting out historical roles. Jan Turnquist was also there. Lots of people were socializing. It definitely felt festive!

Second, you are not allowed to take photographs inside the building. That’s why you don’t see any from me here in this post. But you can see some photos of the inside here.

Third, there’s no elevator. Unfortunately, that means you can’t access the second floor with a wheelchair or stroller, just the ground level. The tour guides can provide a notebook with photos of the upper level if asked.

9. What to ask the tour guide about? The sky’s the limit! The more you read about Louisa and her family before you go, the more questions you will have to ask.

10. Is there anything in the Museum Store, aka gift shop, that I should buy there because it’s not available anywhere else?

If you are a huge fan of LMA and LW, It’s so tempting when walking into the gift shop to want to buy everything! Take a breath and realize the following. Most of the books and DVDs sold there you can probably find online, like on amazon.

So if you are limited on luggage space, it would be easier to order on online from amazon and have them shipped to your home.

The cute T-shirts, socks and pencil bag with the Anna Bond design from Rifle Paper Co. you can find here. They are easy to fit into luggage. I had fun buying those. I got the shirt, socks, and T-shirt for me, the pencil bag for my artist sister and the tote bag for my daughter. (I had already bought my sister a calendar from a bookstore somewhere in Maine and also planned on getting her an apron from amazon when I got home, because I couldn’t find a blueberry apron less than $50 on the trip. I really wanted to give her a blueberry apron! So I sent one from amazon when I got home.) I saw a few items that I’m guessing are unique to the store, mainly the jewelry that appeared to be made by a local artist, and the posters of Bronson’s Alcott’s teachings.

My sister also got the socks and the shirts for her daughters for Christmas. Fun!

This picture book below was available. I had never seen it before but since then I’ve seen it on amazon here.

I got the book of Bronson’s teaching philosophy, which can be found on amazon here. It’s very small and slim. He was definitely a pioneer in acknowledging that children have different learning needs than adults do. It’s hardcover and little like I said so will easily fit in your luggage if you decide to buy it. You can see the maxims here. You can see these ideas resonating with what you read about Charlotte Mason and Montessori. He was definitely a man ahead of time! I especially love his #18 maxim, “To teach, in imitation of the Saviour.” I love that he recognized LMA’s talent for writing and provided a desk for her, going against the popular notion of the day that women shouldn’t be writers because if they did they would get sick.

The postcards are probably something in the store that can’t be bought on online. I bought one of Jessie Willcox’s print, below. Now I have it framed on my desk. I wish now I had bought the postcard showing Orchard House.

11. What else is there to do on the same day or trip while in the town of Concord?

-visit the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery just down and around the bend from OH on Lexington Road, where the Alcott family is buried. This is what we did while waiting for the place to open. You will also find the gravesites of other famous authors at the Authors’ Ridge section of the cemetery: Emerson, Hawthorne, and Thoreau and their families.

Louisa is buried by her parents, sisters, and John Pratt, who is John Brooke in LW, married to Meg (Anna in real life).

Above is the Alcotts’ section, with LMA’s grave below. She has a flag because she served as a nurse in the Civil War.

-check out Walden Pond, where Henry David Thoreau lived and wrote his book Walden

-visit the Old Manse, where Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau all lived at one point

-be sure to visit the Concord battlefield, part of Minute Man National Park, where “the shot was heard around the world” to start the American Revolutionary War.

I so wanted to tour the visitors’ center, but all we had time for was to walk to the battlefield, cross the famous bridge, and see the Minute Man monument.

Whew! We wanted to linger at the Concord battlefield and finish our conversation with the tour guide. Where exactly did the battle take place? on the grassy field, on the bridge, on either side of the bridge? We left not knowing exactly what the tour guide’s answer was. Anyway, we had to leave and made it to our plane on time and flew home. As you can see, one could easily spend a week in Concord exploring all these historical sites!

L.M. Montgomery said of her visit to Concord, “Concord is the only place I saw when I was away where I would like to live, it is a most charming spot and I shall never forget the delightful drive we had around it.” Undoubtedly, that’s in part because Orchard House is there and she visited it!

I hope you arrange to go some time! It’s definitely worth a visit, again and again!

You can explore so many Orchard House/LW resources here.