The James Merrill House Visitors Center
a literary gathering place
Stop by our street-level space at 107 Water Street to:
• Attend a poetry reading
• Meet our current writer-in-residence
• Browse books and gifts
• Explore our latest exhibit
• Or simply say hello!
This space, once home to Doug Radicioni’s beloved Village Barbershop for nearly 50 years, has been thoughtfully renovated to serve as both a Visitors Center and an administrative hub for the James Merrill House.
Today, the Visitors Center hosts community events celebrating poets and writers, offers a curated selection of books by James Merrill and our past writers-in-residence, and features other unique items for sale. Visitors can also catch a glimpse of Merrill’s Pulitzer Prize-winning legacy through a peek into his historic apartment on the upper floors.
We look forward to welcoming you!
CURRENT EXHIBITS
Fans and Clouds and Bats: The Story
In the early 1970s, James Merrill and his partner David Jackson decided the old wallpaper in the sitting room of their apartment at 107 Water Street "had to go." An old friend, Hubbell Pierce, whom they knew as a cocktail lounge crooner of Cole Porter songs, had taken up wallpaper design.
One evening after a soufflé dinner, the three men had an idea for a fantastical new wallpaper, taking the theme of fans and clouds and bats from the images in their old Chinese carpet. After commissioning Pierce to make it, Merrill and Jackson returned from a winter in Greece to find the extravagantly weird, hand-printed wallpaper, named "Summer Palace," installed on the walls of the third-floor parlor.