The Concord Museum sits at 53 Cambridge Turnpike in Concord, Massachusetts. This compact institution, founded in 1886 with collections that began around 1850, is best known for its artifacts of the American Revolution and for objects linked to Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Step close in your imagination: the museum preserves the lantern said to have been hung in the Old North Church in 1775, a lantern immortalized in the 1860 poem "Paul Revere's Ride.
Around that dramatic signal you will find powder horns, muskets, cannonballs, and fifes — tangible traces of the Revolutionary era. Inside, a recreation of Emerson’s study is arranged exactly as at his death in 1882, with his books and furnishings placed as if he might return. And the museum holds the world’s largest collection of Thoreau possessions — over 250 objects, including the bed, desk, and chair from his Walden Pond cabin where he wrote his 1849 book A Week on the Concord...
After a significant renovation completed in 2021, you’ll also encounter new collections focusing on enslaved people, indigenous people, and colonial women. Notice the museum façade facing the Cambridge Turnpike, gateway to Emerson's study and Thoreau's Walden relics inside.