HistoricSiteMarkers
Early RepublicReconstruction & Gilded Age

Cedarmere

Village of Roslyn Harbor, Nassau County, New York

Marker Inscription

THE HOME FROM 1843 TO 1878 OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT (1794-1878), PROMINENT AMERICAN POET, NEWSPAPER EDITOR AND CIVIC LEADER

Erected by William G. Pomeroy Foundation

The Story

Cedarmere was the beloved country estate of William Cullen Bryant, one of nineteenth-century America's most celebrated poets and, for nearly half a century, the influential editor of the New-York Evening Post. From 1843 until his death in 1878 he retreated to this wooded waterside property on Long Island's North Shore, writing, gardening, and hosting the literary and civic figures of his day. Bryant had risen to fame as a young poet in the Early Republic and matured into a leading public voice, championing causes from a free press to the creation of New York's great public parks. The house he shaped here reflects the era when American letters and American civic life were coming into their own.

Why it matters

As the home of a poet who helped define a distinctly American literary voice and an editor who shaped public opinion through the age of print, Cedarmere ties one place to the broader story of how the young nation found its cultural and civic footing.

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Related people

  • · William Cullen Bryant

Themes & tags

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