The Mark Twain House in Hartford has received almost $540,000 in federal aid to assist its financial recovery from the economic aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a statement, the office of U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal said the historic residence and museum, at 351 Farmington Ave., has accepted $539,129 through the federal Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program, which was set up earlier this year to help support live entertainment venues, performing arts organizations, museums, movie theaters, promoters and other similar businesses that had been forcibly closed at the height of the public health crisis.
The house was closed to the public for most of 2020 and early 2021. Guided tours of the site started up again in April.
Twain, born Samuel Clemens in pre-Civil War Missouri, lived at the three-story American Gothic residence in the city’s Asylum Hill neighborhood from 1874 to 1891 and wrote many of his best-known works while there, including “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” “The Prince and the Pauper,” “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” and “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.”
The house has served as a museum since 1974.
