Lincoln Home National Historic Site

The house at the corner of Eighth and Jackson Streets in Springfield, Illinois, is the only home Abraham Lincoln ever owned. He and Mary Lincoln bought it in 1844, 2 years after they married, and they lived there for 17 years, until Lincoln left for Washington as president-elect.

When they bought it, it was a modest story-and-a-half cottage. As Lincoln's law practice grew and the family grew with it, they enlarged the house, and in the 1850s they raised it to a full 2 stories. 3 of their 4 sons were born while they lived there, and one of them, Eddie, died in the house in 1850 at age 3.

Springfield was the state capital, and Lincoln walked from home to his law office and the statehouse a few blocks away. The neighborhood around the house was a middle-class one of frame houses and fences. Much of it has been preserved or restored, so the street looks much as it did when Lincoln lived there.

In 1860, when Lincoln won the Republican nomination, the house became the center of the campaign. Crowds came to the door, and a famous photograph from that summer shows Lincoln, dressed in a white suit, standing in front of the house with a gathering of supporters. Pictures of the house were sold around the country, and it became one of the best-known homes in America.

On February 11, 1861, Lincoln left Springfield by train. He told the crowd at the station that he did not know when, or whether, he would return. He came back 4 years later in a coffin. The house was draped in black for the funeral, and photographers recorded that too. His son Robert gave the house to the State of Illinois in 1887, and it became a national historic site in 1971. When you look at the old photographs, notice how plain it is. It is a comfortable house for a successful lawyer in a small Western capital, and nothing in it hints at what was coming.