ABSTRACT
On 31 May 1997, invited well-wishers and supporters gathered to celebrate the opening of a brand new interpretive centre on the small site adjacent to the house in which Walt Whitman – ‘America’s greatest poet’ – was born in Huntington, Long Island, New York. The centre, designed to house an exhibition that would tell Whitman’s story by presenting the poet’s birthplace in context and increase visitation to the historic site, had been several years in the making and the opening attracted considerable local interest. The nearby streets were lined with parked cars and several hundred people – poets and Whitman fans, Long Island teachers and school children, politicians, journalists and businesspeople – all made their way into the small site to attend the inaugural ceremony, timed to coincide with Whitman’s 178th birthday (Ni 1997: 26).
