Stephen Crane House
The Stephen Crane House in Asbury Park, New Jersey, is where author Stephen Crane (1871-1900) lived from the time he was around 11 years old, around the time the Asbury community was being established. Stephen Crane is best known for the Civil War classic, The Red Badge of Courage, which, more than a century after its first publishing, remains available at bookstores and libraries throughout the US.
The house museum is privately owned but hosts literary and other cultural events, thanks to donors, one of whom is rock music icon Bruce Springsteen. It has also been featured on an episode of the sixth season of Ghost Hunters (SYFY), but nothing conclusive happened to verify the rumor that it is haunted.
According to thestephencranehouse.org: “In 1995, it was slated for demolition. It was saved by Tom and Regina Hayes who lived on Sixth Avenue here. They purchased the run-down structure for $7,500 which was $500 more than Mrs. Crane paid in 1883! After the Hayes family and friends put in a lot of hard work and resources, they turned the house into a community resource and small museum. When they left the city in 2001, they sold the house to Frank D’Alessandro, their Sixth Avenue neighbor, in order to have the house remain as a community resource. Since 1995, the house has been a small venue for hundreds of literary, musical, film and other cultural programs all dedicated to the memory of Stephen and his very literary and artistic family.”
Stephen Crane
While the author is among the most widely read American writers since the early 1900s, his own life was tragically brief. According to britannica.com/biography/Stephen-Crane: “Privation and exposure in his Bowery years and as a correspondent, together with an almost deliberate disregard for his health, probably hastened the disease that killed him at an early age. He died of tuberculosis that was compounded by the recurrent malarial fever he had caught in Cuba.”
You can read more about Stephen Crane by going to britannica.com/biography/Stephen-Crane and our Florida page at authoradventures.org/trails/by-state/florida.
The Stephen Crane House starts off our New Jersey Author Adventures Trail.
Patricia Smart
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