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Naulakha (Rudyard Kipling House)
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
U.S. National Historic Landmark
Naulakha in 2014
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Location	Off U.S. 5, Dummerston, Vermont
Coordinates	42°53′55″N 72°33′51″W / 42.89861°N 72.56417°W / 42.89861; -72.56417
Area	11 acres (4.5 ha)
Built	1892
Architect	Henry Rutgers Marshall
Architectural style	Shingle Style
NRHP reference No.	79000231
Significant dates
Added to NRHP	April 11, 1979
Designated NHL	November 4, 1993

Naulakha, also known as the Rudyard Kipling House, is a historic Shingle Style house on Kipling Road in Dummerston, Vermont, a few miles outside Brattleboro. The house was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1993 for its association with the author Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936), who had it built in 1893 and made it his home until 1896. It is in this house that Kipling wrote Captains Courageous, The Jungle Book, The Day's Work, and The Seven Seas, and did work on Kim and The Just So Stories. Kipling named the house after the Naulakha Pavilion, situated inside Lahore Fort in present-day Pakistan. The house is now owned by the Landmark Trust, and is available for rent.

Name

"Kipling named Naulakha after the book he wrote with Wolcott Balestier, his good friend and Mrs. Kipling's brother, about a precious Indian jewel, and it is filled with a trove of their possessions." Etymologically Naulakha means nine lakhs or nine hundred thousand being the amount of rupees incurred for the cost of construction of the building. The Mughal architecture of the monument had inspired him during his earlier stay (between 1882 and 1887) in Lahore.

Description

Kipling himself described the building and its construction in his autobiography, Something of Myself:

there came out of Quebec Jean Pigeon with nine other habitants who put up a wooden shed for their own accommodation in what seemed twenty minutes, and then set to work to build us a house which we called 'Naulakha.' Ninety feet was the length of it and thirty the width, on a high foundation of solid mortared rocks which gave us an airy and a skunk-proof basement. The rest was wood, shingled, roof and sides, with dull green hand-split shingles, and the windows were lavish and wide. Lavish too was the long open attic, as I realised when too late. Pigeon asked me whether I would have it finished in ash or cherry. Ignorant that I was, I chose ash, and so missed a stretch of perhaps the most satisfying interior wood that is grown. Those were opulent days, when timber was nothing regarded, and the best of cabinet-work could be had for little money.

Stylistically the house is an architecturally cross-cultural and distinctive building, resembling in part a South Asian Indian bungalow, albeit executed in the then-fashionable American Shingle style. The property and house were laid out by Kipling to maximize the family's privacy. Although it has extensive views to the Connecticut River and Mount Monadnock to the east, the house as built had only a single entrance and was only one room deep, with a hallway running along the rear. The house is approached by a tree-lined drive from an iron gate set between fieldstone pillars whose construction Kipling watched. The property includes a number of outbuildings and facilities built by the Kiplings, including a greenhouse, carriage barn, and tennis court.

The Kiplings, while on their honeymoon in 1892, visited Caroline Starr Balestier Kipling's parents in nearby Brattleboro. Taken by the countryside, the couple purchased this property from Caroline's brother, and had the house built on it in 1893 to a design by Henry Rutgers Marshall, with significant input from Kipling. In 1894, Arthur Conan Doyle visited Kipling at Naulakha, where the two played golf together. The Kiplings lived here until 1896, when a dispute with a hot-tempered neighbor (his brother-in-law Beatty Balestier) led to court proceedings and an avalanche of unwelcome publicity. The Kiplings attempted to return in 1899, but illness on the sea crossing from England frustrated the plan. The property was owned for much of the 20th century by members of the Holbrook family, who in 1992 sold it to the Landmark Trust, a preservation organization that restores historic properties and makes them available to the public. The property has largely been restored to its appearance as of the Kiplings’ ownership, and includes artifacts belonging to the family.

The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, and was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1993.

See also

• List of National Historic Landmarks in Vermont
• National Register of Historic Places listings in Windham County, Vermont

References

1. ^ David C. Tansey (April 1993). "National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination: Naulakha / Rudyard Kipling House" (pdf). National Park Service. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help) and Accompanying 14 photos, exterior and interior including one with Rudyard Kipling, from 1895, 1905 and 1992 (32 KB)
2. ^ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. January 23, 2007.
3. ^ "Naulakha (Rudyard Kipling House)". National Historic Landmark summary listing. National Park Service. Archived from the original on September 24, 2012. Retrieved February 18, 2008.
4. Guyon, Anne Lawrence (March 18, 2010). "Where Kipling Reared Mowgli (in Vermont)". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved April 26, 2016.
5. Kaplan, Robert D. (January 29, 1989). "Lahore as Kipling Knew It". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved April 26, 2016.
6. Rudyard Kipling, Something of Myself: for my friends known and unknown, London: Macmillan and Co., 1951 (first published 1937). pp. 114–115
7. Daniel Stashower, Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle (Henry Holt & Co. 1999), pages 185-186.

External links

• The Landmark Trust – Naulakha
• Naulakha (Kipling House) – National Register Nomination Information
• The Kipling Society - Visit to Naulakha in 2014. Photos and descriptions.
• Rare Book of the Month: From the Snows of Vermont Comes the "Jungle Book" A blog post from the Library of Congress

v t e National Register of Historic Places in Windham County, Vermont
National Historic Landmarks	Naulakha Rockingham Meetinghouse
Districts	Bellows Falls Downtown Historic District Bellows Falls Neighborhood Historic District Brattleboro Downtown Historic District Canal Street–Clark Street Neighborhood Historic District Crows Nest Dickinson Estate Historic District Follett Stone Arch Bridge Historic District George–Pine–Henry Street Historic District Grafton Village Historic District Homestead–Horton Neighborhood Historic District Houghtonville Historic District Mechanicsville Historic District Middletown Rural Historic District Moore and Thompson Paper Mill Complex Newfane Village Historic District Parker Hill Rural Historic District ‡ Putney Village Historic District Rockingham Village Historic District Saxtons River Village Historic District Scott Farm Historic District Samuel Gilbert Smith Farmstead South Londonderry Village Historic District South Windham Village Historic District Stratton Mountain Lookout Tower Townshend State Park Vermont Academy Campus Historic District West Brattleboro Green Historic District West Dover Village Historic District West Townshend Village Historic District Westminster Terrace Historic District Westminster Village Historic District Whitingham Village Historic District Williams Street Extension Historic District Wilmington Village Historic District Windham Village Historic District
Buildings	Commercial Bellows Falls Times Building Broad Brook House Brooks House Estey Organ Company Factory Gas Station at Bridge and Island Streets Miss Bellows Falls Diner Tontine Building Educational/ Health Brattleboro Retreat Butterfield House Canal Street Schoolhouse District No. 1 Schoolhouse Grafton District Schoolhouse No. 2 Round Schoolhouse Vernon District Schoolhouse No. 4 Government Dover Town Hall Grafton Post Office Londonderry Town House Industrial Adams Gristmill Warehouse Bellows Falls Co-operative Creamery Complex Howard Hardware Storehouse Robertson Paper Company Complex Religious Brookline Baptist Church Christ Church First Congregational Church and Meetinghouse Grafton Congregational Church and Chapel Guilford Center Meeting House Oak Hill Cemetery Chapel Old Brick Church Pond Road Chapel Residential Corse-Shippee House Theophilus Crawford House Lewis Grout House William A. Hall House William Harris House Deacon John Holbrook House Milldean and Alexander-Davis House Park Farm Sabin–Wheat Farm Wheelock House Arthur D. and Emma J. Wyatt House Transportation Union Station
Site	Bellows Falls Petroglyph Site (VT-WD-8)
Structures	Bartonsville Covered Bridge Bridge 19 Creamery Covered Bridge East Putney Brook Stone Arch Bridge Green River Covered Bridge Green River Crib Dam Hall Covered Bridge Kidder Covered Bridge Medburyville Bridge Rice Farm Road Bridge Sacketts Brook Stone Arch Bridge Scott Covered Bridge Simpsonville Stone Arch Bridge South Newfane Bridge West Dummerston Covered Bridge West Townshend Stone Arch Bridge Williams River Route 5 Bridge Williamsville Covered Bridge Worrall Covered Bridge
Footnotes	‡ This historic property also has portions in an adjacent county.
See also: National Register of Historic Places listings in Windham County, Vermont and List of National Historic Landmarks in Vermont

• National Historic Landmarks in Vermont
• Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Vermont
• Houses completed in 1892
• Shingle Style houses
• Houses in Windham County, Vermont
• National Register of Historic Places in Windham County, Vermont
• Shingle Style architecture in Vermont