Some might say the small cabin that Henry David Thoreau immortalized in his account of the years he lived in the woods by Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts, is the iconic tiny home. His account of building the 10-foot-by-15-foot timber-frame cabin by hand and living simply in the woods has inspired generations searching for respite from the hustle and bustle of everyday lives.
But while Thoreau lived in his cabin from 1845 to 1847, many of his modern disciples, including two in Maine, use theirs as writing retreats, offices, or studios.
Architect Tom Sieniewicz’s current project is a $3 billion, 478-bed building for Mass General Hospital in Boston, but when he is at his family’s summer home on Mt. Desert Island, he retreats to a Walden replica cabin in the woods nearby that was built by his two sons during the pandemic. Despite its spartan setting, or perhaps because of it, the cabin and its connection to nature and the 19th century writer influence the Boston-based architect’s professional work.
Thoreau’s focus on looking at and understanding the natural world has inspired the design of the massive MGH building, Sieniewicz said. Clinical evidence shows that patient outcomes are improved by views to nature, to skies, to green, he said, explaining that patient rooms in the new hospital are angled to provide a view outside from each bed.
“Thoreau’s work is a microscope for looking at and understanding nature,” he said. The cabin “is a simple, vernacular building, but that experience and the view through the window are not dissimilar to a (hospital) patient room.”
In another Thoreau-inspired structure, writer Jeffrey Ryan has recounted the process of building his cabin in a series of blog posts, many of them written while sitting at a plain wooden desk looking out the window of his Thoreau cabin. Like Thoreau and Sieniewicz, he has kept the space simple, with just a bed, a wood stove, three chairs, and a replica of Thoreau’s desk that he built himself.
“There is a certain nostalgia for people of a certain age who want to reconnect with Thoreau’s philosophy,” Ryan said. “That sense of place and being in the woods makes your writing stronger.”
Ryan and Sieniewicz were included in a recent story in the New York Times about the allure of self-built replicas of Thoreau’s cabin. Soon after that story ran, the Thoreau Alliance sold out of its small stock of plans for the cabin, which were drawn in 1945 by the late archaeologist and author Roland Wells Robbins, and the alliance had to print more, according to Rebecca Migdal, the alliance’s executive director (a portion of the plan was reproduced in this magazine in issue 62). The Alliance, which is dedicated to preserving and promoting Thoreau’s legacy, manages the Thoreau Farm and runs a small store at Walden Pond.
Writers and others who use their cabins as places of reflection might not be so far from Thoreau’s intent with his sojourn at Walden, Migdal said. He saw his time there as an experiment in living simply, not as a long-term solution. His brother had recently died and he needed time to process his grief, she said, noting stories about Thoreau as a hermit are a myth. He went into town often for supplies and ate occasional meals with his mother who also did his laundry. Mostly he wanted a quiet place to live, write, and reflect.
“He wasn’t about avoiding society, he was about finding solitude to make sense of society,” said Migdal.
The idea of a place to retreat to and think free from contemporary distractions has huge appeal today. And there is something special about making that space with your own hands, like Thoreau did.
“There is some of the same fitness in a man’s building his own house as there is in a bird building its own nest,” wrote Thoreau.
Ryan, who worked for L.L. Bean for many years and has written several conservation-oriented books, has been interested in Thoreau since his mother gave him a copy of Thoreau’s book Walden, or Life in the Woods when he was 14. “What always stuck with me was building a cabin in the woods,” he said.
He found the time and place to realize that dream when he moved from Portland to almost 7 acres in Parsonsfield a couple of years ago. He used material left over from the construction of his post-and-beam house, seeking, like Thoreau, to spend as little money as possible on his cabin. Thoreau, whose cabin took three months to build, spent just $28.12 on materials, including 31 cents for hair used as insulation. Ryan’s cabin cost him $1,670, including $5 each for windows he found on Facebook Marketplace. He used modern insulation, turning down the offer of a barrel of horse hair from a neighboring farmer, and plans to lathe and plaster the space at a later date. The process thus far took him about nine months.
“I just love the way it turned out,” he said. “I relax when I’m in there working.”
The peace, quiet, and simple surroundings have helped him focus on his work, including a just-finished collection of essays on nature, and a work in progress about how and why he built his cabin.
A cable running from his main house provides internet; a couple of solar-powered generators provide a minimal amount of electricity for one LED light. Additional light comes from a kerosene lamp.
“The most important thing is not to clutter it up with stuff,” he said. “For me the simplicity really helps. Clutter in the cabin is clutter for the mind.”
Tom Sieniewicz didn’t actually build the replica cabin behind his family’s summer home. It was a project initiated by his two sons, Satchel, who was in college at the time, and Jasper, who was in high school. The boys initially wanted to build a tree house as a place to retreat from their parents, but Sieniewicz, who had visited Walden Pond with his boys when they were little and had read to them from Thoreau’s writing, gave them plans for the cabin instead. The boys got to work cutting up fallen trees on the property, and building a small sawmill to cut board and timbers—like Thoreau they left the bark on some of the wood used in framing the roof. The older son, now a mechanical engineer with a degree from MIT, had taken classes in woodworking and joinery so he had a sense of what to do and how to do it. They spent a summer building the frame, sheathing it, and adding roof frames. By the fall the structure had been enclosed. They spent the next summer shingling it, and building doors from salvaged wood, Sieniewicz said.
Thoreau’s cabin was 10 feet by 15 feet. Robbins developed a set of plans for those dimensions, but most modern builders, including the Sieniewicz family and Ryan, used plans Robbins drew for a 10-foot-by-16-foot cabin, which lends itself more easily to modern construction.
Once the Sieniewicz boys finished building the cabin, they moved on to other endeavors.
“I kept on thinking they would move in,” Sieniewicz said. “One son spent a couple nights there but he said it was dark and buggy.”
Instead, the quiet space nestled in the woods above Somes Sound has been taken over by Dad.
“I’m up there now a lot more than they are,” Sieniewicz said. “I built a reproduction of Thoreau’s desk from wood on site and have three chairs. I go there to read and write, and paint.”
The cabin has no internet or electricity and is lit by an oil lamp. “What a luxury in this modern world to have a place that’s silent, where the only noise is a squirrel jumping on the roof, and birds and wind,” he said. “As a piece of architecture, it’s absolutely perfect.”
✮
Polly Saltonstall is MBH&H’s editor at large.
Cabin Plans:
Plans for a Thoreau cabin are available for $75 from the Thoreau Alliance. You can find them at shopatwaldenpond.org.
From Woods to Pencils
Henry David Thoreau’s fame today is based on his writing. Less well known is that he had a significant impact on the technology behind writing. Thoreau worked in his family’s business making pencils. The company used graphite mined in a New Hampshire quarry, according to Thoreau Alliance Executive Director Rebecca Migdal. Thoreau, who was quite interested in technology, came up with a process to refine the graphite with clay to make it harder, reducing breakage and smudging. That innovation led to the use of a scale for pencil hardness and the concept of the No. 2 pencil that school children know well, Migdal said. He also designed a machine to make the manufacturing process more efficient. As a result, the Thoreau pencil was the best-selling American-made pencil in its day.
—Polly Saltonstall
