Monte Cristo Cottage (1840)

In 1886, actor James O’Neill purchased an 1840 house at 138 (now 325) Pequot Avenue in New London. O’Neill initially rented out the home, while he and his family spent their summers at a neighboring property that he had acquired two years before. In 1900, the O’Neills began summering in the 1840 house, which James O’Neill named Monte Cristo Cottage in honor of his most popular stage role as the Count Of Monte Cristo. Before moving in, O’Neill made a number of changes to the house, including adding the turret bedroom, the French doors opening onto the front porch, and attaching a one room schoolhouse, moved from elsewhere, to become the living room. Comfort was sacrificed in the family’s section of the house in order to focus funds on the house’s public spaces. The actor’s son, the playwright Eugene O’Neill, spent his boyhood summers at the Cottage from 1900 to 1917. After being struck by a car on Fifth Avenue in New York in 1918, James O’Neill’s health began to deteriorate. He sold the Cottage and his other real estate on Pequot Avenue just before his death in 1920. The house is now a museum, owned by the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. Restoration began in 1972, with a new restoration in 2005 to reflect the setting of O’Neill’s autobiographical play, Long Day’s Journey Into Night.