B&B at it's finest
Dog3 wrote:
> I swiped this from another ng I read. I think this would make a
> fantastic B&B. Thanks Mike, if you're reading.
>
> Michael
> *******
OOOH yeah!
Jill
> Begin article:
>
> In case you missed it,
>
> asking price of $699,920. Real estate taxes are $7,649
>
> House of the week: 'Lizzie Borden' B&B on market in Fall River
>
> 01:00 AM EST on Saturday, January 17, 2004
>
> BY AVIS GUNTHER-ROSENBERG
> Journal Staff Writer
>
> FALL RIVER, MASS. -- On the morning of Aug. 4, 1892, Andrew J.
> Borden, 70, and
> his second wife, Abby Durfee Borden, 65, were brutally murdered --
> struck repeatedly in the head, neck and shoulders with a hatchet. You
> can own the murder site, complete with ghostly apparitions and
> mysterious cat meowings, unexplained door closings and startling
> visions, loud rappings and the echoes of
> children's laughter.
>
> Or, if you don't believe in ghosts, you can buy a beautifully kept
> 3,146-square-foot Greek-revival residence complete with period
> furnishings and
> historical treasures to be run as a profitable bed and breakfast or
> converted
> back to a stately private home.
>
> Of course, you could go in thinking the latter, and circumstances
> could change
> your mind . . .
>
> The house, at 92 Second St., was built in 1845 by a carpenter whom
> Andrew Borden
> worked for. Borden -- who held several jobs including banker and
> coffin maker --
> bought the house for himself, Abby, and his two daughters from his
> first marriage -- Lizzie and Emma.
>
> One of the major family conflicts involved the house, which Abby and
> Andrew wanted to stay in and Lizzie wanted to leave for a more
> elegant house overlooking the city in the Highlands. In fact, after
> Lizzie was tried and acquitted of the murder charges, she moved to a
> Highlands house she called Maplecroft. A caretaker remained here for
> 25 years. Ultimately, she and Emma
> sold it to him for "a dollar plus considerations."
>
> The house was in several different hands, until Josephine and John
> McGinn bought
> it in 1948. Their granddaughter, Martha McGinn, lived here during her
> teen years, in Emma's former bedroom.
>
> After their deaths, McGinn -- along with business partner Simone J.
> Evans converted the house to a bed-and-breakfast. Using historical
> documents and police photos from the murder scene, McGinn and Evans
> restored and furnished the
> house as closely as possible to the way it was in 1892, complete with
> reproductions of the floral wall coverings and carpeting, and the
> distinctive
> Victorian furnishings. Over time, they also acquired several items
> that belonged
> to Lizzie, including one of her dresses, her sewing machine, and
> several of her
> books. They even have a costume Elizabeth Montgomery wore in the
> made-for-television movie, The Legend of Lizzie Borden.
>
> "One of the books we got a kick out of was named, With Edged Tools,"
> McGinn says.
>
> McGinn and Evans opened the bed and breakfast on Aug. 4, 1996, the
> 104th anniversary of the murders.
>
> The house has the original windows, woodwork, ornate radiators and
> doorknobs,
> and all two original interior doors. The central air conditioning is a
> modern
> addition, as are electricity and bathrooms. (The Bordens had kerosene
> lamps and
> an indoor privy in the basement with "slop pails" in the bedrooms.)
>
> And while there are things from the house that Lizzie owned at
> Maplecroft - -
> like her sewing machine -- most of the furnishings of this house were
> lost when
> the waterfront storage building they were housed in was destroyed in a
> hurricane.
>
> The dining room table, sideboard and hutch came from Maplecroft, and
> are of the
> era Lizzie lived there, but McGinn says she can't document that they
> were owned
> by Borden. A silver tea set on the sideboard was donated by a Borden
> descendant,
> but was not Borden's.
>
> In the entry foyer -- the entrance that Andrew Borden had some
> difficulty getting in on the day of the murder -- a mannequin is
> attired in Lizzie's own
> dress. A piano has been placed in the front parlor where Lizzie would
> have taken
> lessons.
>
> Lizzie's bedroom has both a bed and a fainting couch, as documented in
> stories
> about the house at the time the Bordens lived there.
>
> "She had to have one in case she got the vapors," McGinn says.
>
> But the most amazing restorations are at the two murder scenes, where
> police
> photographers provided stunning documentation of what the house looked
> like.
> McGinn and Evans were able to find duplicates of the sitting room sofa
> where
> Andrew was killed while he lay resting from the midday heat, and the
> bed and
> bureau of the guest room where Abby was hacked to death while
> changing the covers on the bed pillows. Copies of the photos of the
> bodies hang in frames on
> the walls above the spots they were found.
>
> Other bizarre features include the heavy wooden door -- reportedly a
> coffin cover made by Borden into a hatch -- that closes off the
> upstairs rooms, and a
> trap door in the floor of one of the third-floor bedrooms -- the one
> that belonged to the Bordens' maid Bridget, who was supposedly in the
> yard washing
> windows at the time of the murders. McGinn says that one of the owners
> after the
> Bordens was a bookie, and that the trap door led down to a dry well
> in the basement.
>
> "The story is that when Sharky got word the cops were coming to raid
> them, he
> threw the betting slips down through the trap door to a fire he kept
> burning in
> the basement."
>
> With all the eerie and ghoulish happenings in the past, is the Borden
> house really haunted?
>
> "We hear footsteps all the time," McGinn says. "I have all my life.
> Or a door
> will open or shut or lock by itself. But they aren't nasty. They are
> not malicious."
>
> Once, during a snowstorm, a caretaker once heard pounding on the front
> door, but
> there was no one there when he went to answer it, she says. Then he
> heard pounding on the back door, but there was no one there either.
> He thought at first someone was playing a trick on him, but there
> wasn't a single footprint in
> the freshly fallen snow.
>
> Some guests have reported hearing a woman crying. Others swear they
> hear children playing marbles. For the longest time, McGinn couldn't
> understand that.
> Then she found out about another murder next door.
>
> "We found out there were two kids next door, and their mother drowned
> them in
> the well," McGinn says.
>
> Several people have reported hearing a cat meowing, but only the house
> manager
> reports actually seeing the ghostly figure of a cat.
>
> "People say Lizzie killed one of Abby's cats, but I have serious
> doubts about
> it," McGinn says. "When she died, she left a lot of money to the
> Animal Rescue
> League, and she bought her pets headstones when then died."
>
> Another frightening tale involves two maids who went up to make the
> bed in the
> guest room that Abby was murdered in.
>
> "One went downstairs, and the other went back to put towels in,"
> McGinn says.
> "All of a sudden, there was an imprint on the bed like someone was
> lying there."
> When the other maid returned to the room at her insistence, she saw
> it, too.
> "The maid wouldn't even go back in the house to get her paycheck after
> that."
>
> Has McGinn ever actually seen a ghost? Once, as a teenager, she says:
> "I was
> coming downstairs to the basement to do laundry, and I saw what
> looked like a
> silhouette of a woman in Victorian clothes floating 3 or 4 inches off
> the floor."
>
> What did McGinn do? "I ran upstairs and did my laundry later. The
> laundry still
> needed to be done."
>
> Then there is the strange matter of the murder date -- Aug. 4, 1892.
> McGinn's
> grandparents, who had no idea they would buy the crime scene more
> than two decades later, were married on Aug. 4, 1925. They signed the
> purchase-and- sales
> agreement on Aug. 4, 1947 or '48. McGinn was born on Aug. 4, 1954.
>
> McGinn and Evans have enjoyed owning this home of mysteries, but have
> decided to
> place the building on the market in order to spend more time with
> their families, McGinn says. All of the furnishings and some of
> Lizzie's clothes and
> personal items are included in the asking price of $699,920. Real
> estate taxes
> are $7,649.
>
> The sale price also includes the businesses. Bed and breakfast room
> rates are
> $150 to $200 a night and up, depending on occupancy. Emma and Lizzie's
> bedrooms
> and Andrew and Abby's bedrooms form two two-bedroom guest suites.
> There are four
> additional guest rooms -- one on the second floor and three on the
> third, including maid Bridget's room.
>
> In addition, the house connects to 5,945 square feet of commercial
> space that
> houses Leary Press. The business and the house sit on an
> 8,162-square-foot lot
> across from the bus station, in the heart of downtown Fall River.
>
> Paula Drake of Riverside Realty, Somerset, Mass. has the listing. For
> more information on the house, you can visit the bed-and-breakfast
> Web site at Lizzie-Borden.com or the Fall River Historical Society
> Web Site at LizzieBorden.org.
>
> http://www.projo.com/realestate/cont...en.1d686e.html
>
> Fall River PD transcripts of questioning of Lizzie
>
> http://www.frpd.org/lizzie/part1.htm
|