Herman Melville was very fond of his chimney.

The center of Melville's family life and career moved to Arrowhead. Eventually, the comfortable farmhouse was home to him and Lizzie, their two boys and two daughters, his mother Maria, and his sisters Augusta, Helen, and Fanny. Nathaniel Hawthorne slept at Melville's house so frequently for a few years that he had a separate little bedroom off of Melville's study.

After Moby-Dick, Melville wrote numerous more works there, including the novels Pierre and The Confidence-Man, the collection The Piazza Tales, the short story "Bartleby the Scrivener," and many others. In his 1856 short novella "I and My Chimney," Melville memorialized the big central chimney that he had grown particularly fond of. This is one of the interesting facts about Herman Melville. But since Moby-Dick failed to gain a following, Melville's financial difficulties forced him to sell Arrowhead to his brother Allan in 1863. A few phrases from "I and My Chimney" were written on the chimney's stonework as a tribute by Allan, and they may still be seen today.