James Merrill House


The James Merrill House is a 19th-century house at 107 Water Street in Stonington Borough in southeastern Connecticut, formerly owned by poet James Merrill. Upon his death in 1995, the house was kept by the village as a home for writers and scholars.

History

The American poet James Merrill and his partner David Jackson moved to the borough of Stonington, Connecticut, in 1954, purchasing a property at 107 Water Street. It had once been a nineteenth-century residential and commercial structure that had first served as a drug store and a residence for the owner's family. Merrill spent summers in Stonington borough until his death in 1995. Village life and the apartment itself inspired some of his most important work, including The Changing Light at Sandover, his book-length epic poem based on Merrill's and Jackson's communications with the spirit world by means of a Ouija board in the turret dining room on the third floor.
After James Merrill's death in 1995, the Stonington Village Improvement Association transformed the Jackson and Merrill apartments into a place for writers to live and work. A group of Stonington residents and friends of Merrill began a program that would make the apartment available, rent-free, to writers and scholars for academic-year residencies. The Merrill apartment looks much the way Merrill left it – the personally eclectic décor remains as it was two decades ago. In the years since Merrill's death, over thirty writers have used this space as a residence and retreat.
The house is usually occupied by just one writer at a time, for stays of one month in fall and winter or three months during spring.
The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places on August 28, 2013 and designated a National Historic Landmark on October 31, 2016.

James Merrill House Writers in Residence

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