The James Merrill House is nationally significant for its close, forty-one-year association with James Ingram Merrill (1926-95), one of his generation's most acclaimed poets---considered peerless among his contemporaries who were writing in meter and rhyme (Criterion B). Over the course of his extraordinary career, this erudite and accomplished writer produced twenty-five volumes of poetry, along with three plays, two novels, numerous essays and a memoir. The multilingual author also translated dozens of works of other poets into French, Portuguese, Dutch and modem Greek, and contributed countless introductions, forewords and afterwords to the publications of his colleagues. Merrill's impressive canon of work garnered nearly every major award in his field, including the Pulitzer Prize; two National Book Awards in Poetry; the National Book Critics Circle Award; the Library of Congress's first Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry; Yale's Bollingen Prize for Poetry; and the Medal of Honor for Literature from the National Arts Club. James Merrill lived in this house with his long-time partner, David Jackson.
Place
James Merrill House
Photograph courtesy of the Connecticut State Historic Preservation Office
James Merrill House Information
Property Name Merrill James House
Reference Number 13000618
State Connecticut
County New London
Town Stonington
Street Address 107 Water Street
Multiple Property Submission Name N/A
Status Listed 8/28/2013 NHL Designated 11/2/2016 Areas of Significance LITERATURE
Link to National Register Nomination
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation's historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service's National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America's historic and archeological resources.
Last updated: July 28, 2017