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Pearl S. Buck House (Green Hills Farm)

Green Hills farm consists of a complex of buildings constructed over the past 200 years on approximately 58 acres. The property has been designated a National Historic Landmark for its association with noted author Pearl S. Buck, Buck purchased the farm in 1933 and made it her home until her death in 1973. The house's solid stone and 1835 age, she later said, symbolized for her strength and durability. The oldest building on the property is a one-story stone summer kitchen that was purportedly constructed before the American Revolution. Constructed of coursed fieldstone, the house is four bays wide and two deep with the main entrance located in the second bay. Two gable dormers are located on the front and rear slope of the roof. Chimneys are located on each gable end. When Mrs. Buck purchased the farmstead, she made extensive alternations and additions to the 19th-century farmhouse, including a two-story fieldstone wing added to the east gable. The author of more than 85 books and winner of the Nobel and Pulitzer prizes in literature, Buck gained fame for her books on China, notably The Good Earth, which chronicled the fictional life of the farmer Wang Lung against the backdrop of 20th-century turmoil and revolution in China. At the time of her death the American literary establishment had consigned her work to a middle brow rank in the history of American literature, and while she was popularly acclaimed she received critical rejection from college textbooks and anthologies until sometime after her death. The stone farmhouse and outbuildings are currently used as the center for the Pearl S. Buck Foundation. The house is maintained as a museum and is open to the public. Today, Green Hills Farm is the headquarters of the Pearl S. Buck International (PSBI), a non-sectarian development and humanitarian assistance organization dedicated to improving the quality of life and expanding opportunities for children, who, as a result of the circumstances of their birth, have been denied access to educational, social, economic and civil rights.