Early Life

"Gambrel-roofed house"

In 1870, Holmes and his brother sold the house to Harvard University and in—to use Holmes’ words—“a case of justifiable domicide,” it was demolished in 1883.

Born and raised in Cambridge, in the “gambrel-roofed house” adjoining Harvard Yard, on August 29, 1809, Oliver Wendell Holmes was the fourth child and first son of minister Abiel Holmes and his wife Sarah Wendell. He was a graduate of the Class of 1829 at Harvard College and began to make a name for himself as a poet, first publishing in The Collegian, a student magazine, in 1830. Holmes’ poem “Old Ironsides,” written in defense of the condemned frigate Constitution, was printed in the Boston Daily Advertiser for September 16, 1830; it was then widely circulated in newspapers, causing a sensation, and was Holmes’ first public success. “An occurrence, which otherwise would probably have passed unnoticed, now stirred a national indignation…. The Constitution’s ensign was not torn down. The ringing spirited verses gave the gallant ship a reprieve, which satisfied sentimentality, and a large part of the people of the United States had heard of O. W. Holmes, law student at Cambridge, who had only come of age a month ago.”