The result is a "cottage" that was widely known even at the time, appearing in "Harper's Weekly" and in guidebooks to the area. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. said that Sunnyside stood "next to Mount Vernon, the best known and most cherished of all the dwellings in our land." The public interest in the home, and in Irving, America's first literary star, drew numerous visitors throughout the year, hoping to catch a glimpse of Irving working. Irving's neighbor Nathaniel Parker Willis joked, "Could not Sunny-side 'pay' to be got ready for a boarding-house?"