Walt Whitman Birthplace

The Walt Whitman Birthplace State Historic Site is a state historic site in New York in the United States, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The site preserves the birthplace of American poet Walt Whitman. In 1819, Walt Whitman was born at a farmhouse in West Hills built by his father circa 1810. The Birthplace was restored in 2001 and it is a fine example of native Long Island craftsmanship. The Birthplace is the only NYS Historic Site on Long Island listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1998, the White House Millennium Council named it an "American Treasure." In 2007, the Walt Whitman Trail, which begins at the Birthplace, was designated a National Recreational Trail by the US Dept. of the Interior. Walt Whitman was born, the second of nine children, in Huntington, Long Island, New York, on May 31, 1819. His ancestors and family had lived in the West Hills area of South Huntington for over one hundred and twenty five years. Walt Whitman’s Birthplace, a State Historic Site listed on the National Register of Historic Places, still stands and commemorates his nativity. The farmhouse was constructed by the poet’s father Walter Whitman Sr., a house builder, upon his marriage to Louisa Van Velsor in 1816. During the spring of 1855 Whitman published the first edition of Leaves of Grass. It was a thin volume of poems written in a highly innovative style. Unable to find a publisher, he employed his Brooklyn friends, the Rome brothers, to print it. The book was advertised and distributed by Fowler and Wells of New York City. Although it did not sell, it was praised by such noted intellectuals as Ralph Waldo Emerson and found acceptance among progressively minded Americans. The book contained twelve untitled poems, the first of which later became “Song of Myself.” In this poem Whitman used his own individuality as a measure of self, presenting his own soaring spirit as synonymous with that of the American people. He was a personal as well as a political poet.