José Martí Birthplace Museum

The Jose Marti Birthplace Museum guide starts in this narrow house on Leonor Perez Street, where Marti was born in 1853 to a Spanish artillery sergeant, and asks what the future exile and writer most wanted to explain to children abroad. It follows him to New York, where he stood at the East River in 1883 watching a new suspension bridge join two cities after fifteen years of labor, and later tried to hand that same wonder to young readers through his magazine La Edad de Oro before money and politics cut it short. Stand in the rooms where his letters and portraits are kept and picture the sergeant's son before any of that happened, just a boy watching.