Clothes Closet

[Nadzieja]

I've started to read the New Edition of the Preliminary Hearing. I'm on page 56 where Dr. Dolan is being asked about the clothes closet.
He is asked about a window "as big nealy as one of these opening out of it on to the street". He agrees there was a window but it was dark on account of the clothes hanging & obstructing the light. My question----I know there is a bathroom where that closet was originally. This window they speak of was it facing the street then covered over at a later date? I really can't remember any pictures where there was a window over the front door.

Any information is helpful!

[Nadzieja]

OK Ok, Maybe because it's I read at night. I finally looked up a picture of the house and YES there is a window above the door. Sorry====

[mbhenty]

Is it not great when you can solve your own delima

It is highly likely that there was NO closet there when the Andrew Borden purchased the house. The hallway upstairs and downstairs were common thruways. If you remember it was a two family home. The doors leading to the front parlor and sitting room were 'entry' doors. The same floor plan down stairs was true upstairs. So, when the Borden house was built there was no closet, and the window on the 2nd floor fed the hallway area. That is why there is a full size window in a closet. At least that is my experience from working in countless homes in fall river with the same basic floor plan as the Borden house.

[Nadzieja]

Thank you for not laughing hysterically!!!!! I never pictured it, but you're right that window would have lit the hallway upstairs. It must have cost quite a bit to turn that into a one family. Also I was wondering, when it was a two family what did they have as a heat source? Would it have just been the stove in the kitchen? I know the radiators were put in after but not sure when.
The other homes in Fall River with the basic design, were they also two family or were most of them converted to one family?

[mbhenty]

Yes:

92 was built in 1845, the heyday of Greek Revival Architecture. When it was two separate apartments it was probably heated by fireplaces and/or wood/coal burning black stoves.

When I was there once I brought up what I felt was the history behind the fireplace in the sitting room. To me it was a simple observation, though everyone looked at me with dubious eyes, which told me that the three historians in the house that day had no clue.

I supplied some photos below. (click on them to make big)

When the house had two apartments the fireplace mantle in the sitting room had its home in the parlor, or front room which overlooks the street. The room above is the Morse bedroom, or Abby death room. That was also a parlor for the apartment on the second floor. If you look behind the bed in the photo below you can see the exact same fireplace mantle that exists in the sitting room. These apartments were clones of one another. Andrew Borden had the mantle moved. You can see how it doesn't fit very well and how Andrew had to cut into the door jam leading to the kitchen to make the mantle fit. What was in the sitting room was probably the more modest fireplace mantle that stands to the right of it and used as a book shelf today.

[Nadzieja]

AHHHH!! My reply didn't post, oh well I'll try again
so bear with me MB!!!! From what I understand, Andrew closed up the fireplace in the parlor and moved it to the sitting room using the parlor mantle.
I can't imagine adding a fireplace & going up two floors with a chimney. I know it backs the kitchen stove but wouldn't it need a second flu?
I always wondered why that fireplace was so close to the door and not toward the middle of the wall.
Because the bed was always in front of the one upstairs, it took me a long time to notice it.

I keep thinking about the traffic pattern in those apartments. I'm assuming everyone stayed in the kitchen and the other rooms were bedrooms because if not how would you get into the parlor without going through someone's room.

[mbhenty]

Yes in the time of yore the brick chimney was the flu, with both floors sharing the same chimney. There was no clay or pipe flue system such as there is today.

All the fire places or stove locations in the Borden home at 92 used existing chimneys, that is to say, the ones that were placed there when the house was built which are the same today.

Now, the reason why the fireplace was so close to the door was because it had a smaller mantle. The black mantle there now was not designed for that room. (sitting room)

As far as the traffic pattern is concerned let's look at one of the floors, the first floor. (Since the second was an exact copy.) When you entered the house via the back door, you went into a common hallway which led to the entry door, which led into the kitchen. When you left the kitchen and walked towards the front of the house you did so through the sitting room, which led to the front hallway and the front door.

Now, where the dinning room exists today on the first floor is where the bedrooms existed. There were two bedrooms on each floor. (or apartment) Just before leaving the kitchen to enter the sitting room there was a door on the right which led to one bedroom. Once in the sitting room, and just the other side of the sofa, there was another door which led do the 2nd bedroom.

Andrew borden left the bedrooms intacted on the 2nd floor. One became Emma's room, and the other became Abby's clothes room.

So, before the house was split up, and on both floors, you came into the house via a common back hall or a common front hall. The common back hall lead into the kitchenS. The common front hall had two entries into each apartment. One lead to the parlorS and the other, straight ahead, into the sitting areaS, or sitting roomS. So it was a straight run from kitchen, through sitting room, through front hallway and out the front door. On the second floor it was a straight run from kitchen, through sitting room, through front hallway, down the front stairs and out the front door.

The one thing that may confuse us, and we must consider the times, was that the bedrooms were very tiny. As a one family home 92 Second Street had ample room. But as two apartments, each apartment was not that large at all.

Now, mentioning the size of the bedrooms. In today's world people have become vulgar and crass in the size of bedrooms. Spoiled and greedy is putting it mildly. Look at the homes they are building today. Huge McMansions. Some with bedrooms the size of some older homes. Considering the pine box we all end up in when our time is up, these obscene buildings speak to pampered indulgence and coddled personas with skewed perceptions of what is normal and what is excessive. If you have the money than I suppose you should go for it. But I know several friends who live in such places and owe the world a fortune. And though they appear successful, life is passing them by as the struggle to make their monthly mortgage.

[Nadzieja]

Thank you MB!!!!!!! that has to be the best explanation I've heard. It makes complete sense about the two bedrooms. Each would have one entry and each would have a window. Yes, I agree very very tiny, but it was livable. I had a small bedroom that size in my mother's old house. Her house only had one main closet with hooks nothing in the individual rooms.

So if they were exact copies, then there was a fireplace downstairs in the parlor just like upstairs in the guest room. Did Lizzie's room also have one like the sitting room?

I agree with you about the huge homes they are building today. When they first started going up around here my first thought was, how are you going to afford to heat them. After the first year many of them were up for sale and I still don't know how they pay for them. The tax rate here went through the roof. We live in a modest size home and we are very comfortable. I'm the daughter of a mill worker, if my dad had lived to see me now & saw my home he would tell me I had nothing in the world to complain about. And he'd be right. I can't see owing huge sums of money and not having peace of mind. It's not worth it. Thanks again for taking the time to pose.

[mbhenty]

Yes, Lizzie's bedroom did have a fireplace at one time just like the one in the sitting room on the first floor. Lizzie's bedroom was once the sitting room for the second floor apartment.

92 Second Street had/has 2 chimneys. One between the kitchen and sitting room, with a stove in the kitchen and a fireplace in the sitting room fed through one chimney. And a second chimney between Emma's room and the guest room. Emma's room did not have a fireplace or facilities for a stove.

If you look at the drawing in the post above of the floor plan you can see the chimney between the kitchen and sitting room plainly.

But when Thomas Kieran, the architect who drew the illustrated drawing of the floor plan, he left out the chimney between the parlor and the dining room. (same chimney between Emma's room and the guest room on the second Floor... where you can still see the black fireplace mantle behind the bed.

Photos of the exterior of the house showing both chimneys in the same shot are hard to find. But in the one below you can plainly see the front chimney and the tip of the back chimney.

[Nadzieja]

Thank you again for the explanations. I find even the smallest bit of information interesting. When was the house this color? Also I noticed in this photo that it looks like the foundation is solid granite. I really never noticed it before.

One other question (Sorry I seem to have millions of them!) How big of a family would live in an apartment the size of what these were in this house?
With the influx of people to work in the mills housing must not have been easy to find.

Another thing I thought of is I wonder what it actually cost Andrew to fix up this house. It doesn't look like an easy task at all.

[mbhenty]

Yes Nadzieja:

It looked that way about 10 years ago, or around the time it was turned into a B&B. I would like to say 2005?

Your guess about what size family would have lived in such a place is as good as mine.

But this we know:

The building was custom build in 1845 for Charles Trafton and his wife Hannah, and was known as 66 Second Street. Built by no other than Southard Miller, Seabury Bowen's father-in-law, who was a carpenter at the time. Around the same time, (a year or so before or after purchasing the house) Charles Trafton had a son. But he lived only 10 days. He had no children after that. I would assume that Trafton and his wife lived on the first floor. City records would need to be studied to see who lived on the second floor. Trafton's wife died around 6 years after the house was built. She was 32. Trafton was widowed for 15 years before he married once again to a gal that was like 23 years younger than he was, and on Christmas day. What a guy! Trafton lived at Second Street with his new wife for about 6 years before selling the place to Andrew Borden and moving to Somerset.

To me 92 Second Street will always be known as the Charles Trafton House. After all, he did build it and lived there for 21 years.

[Nadzieja]

Ok MB, I'm going to pick your brain again. The space on the left when you come in the side door. The reason I'm asking is because reading Bridget's testimony in the preliminary hearing, she said something about putting something in the space on the left ( I think ice??) what actually went in there? Then the area from the kitchen, it looks like it says pantry. That make sense to me. Now that entire area is the full bath that is there now. So they had to close off that first doorway and it looks like also a wall had to be taken down. I wonder when that was done to the house. Any ideas?

[mbhenty]

Thank you Nadzieja for keeping my brain busy.

Now, as you came in the back door to the Borden house there was a door immediately to the left. It was a small room. Called the sink room in Lizzie's time. In Europe they were called 'scullery rooms'. This is where the washing was done, dishes or what have you. Most were kept towards the back of the house. In earlier times households got their water from a pump in the back yard. This was brought into the Sink Room or Scullery and used for all sorts of washing, thus the sink room was kept close to the area in the back of the house where water supply existed. Think of it this way. It was like when toilets were outside. So were water supplies. In time the pump was brought inside, but never really made it into the cooking area, or kitchen. Sink rooms were usually 'in the house', but not really 'in the house'.

Now if you look at the floor plans below, you can see the sink room. But it is not really inside the house but in a common hallway. When the Borden house was a two family home there was another sink room just like the one on the first level upstairs on the second.

So, when you came in from the back porch you did so into a common hallway. Once inside there was the tiny room on the left, called the sink room, and a door straight ahead, which was the entrance into the first floor apartment. Through this entrance you found yourself in the kitchen. The pantry was where all today's kitchen cabinets were kept.

Now if you came up the driveway of the Borden house in 1892 you would see an old well just to the left of the barn. It is believed, at least by me, if I can remember correctly, that Borden abandoned this well and had the house connected to the city water supply and a pump installed in the sink room. There are records of the town water being turned on for 92 second street during Borden's tenure.

Now I believe the sink room on the second floor was kept intact when Borden had his bedroom installed. Not sure what he used it for, though?

[Nadzieja]

So sorry to take so long to respond, had a few 12 hour shifts in there, also had a fender bender on Sat. morning which took up some time!! Been a crazy weekend & few days!! Thank you so much for this diagram, I didn't realize that the sink room wasn't really inside the first floor apartment. Was this common in these old houses? When they did get indoor plumbing all this must have changed. I just love looking at these old plans & seeing how people lived back then. All I can think of is how food must have spoiled very quickly in the summer. You would basically have to shop everyday & buy just enough for that day so you wouldn't be throwing anything out.

[mbhenty]

Yes>

Back in the seventies I spent some time in England. Large refrigerators, such as the ones in the US were rare. Most kitchens had a small college apartment size fridge. That was because everyone shopped for food every day. Meals were always fresh. Especially meats. The meat you had for supper was purchased that day. And most shoppers purchased their meat from a meat market. There was very little chance that anything would spoil. I would think that Brits have large fridges today like here in the US, and meats are kept longer or frozen. I imagine that in Lizzie's day food was purchased as it was used. But an Icebox was a poor substitute for a modern fridge. And, left over mutton didn't have a chance.

[Nadzieja]

MB, Remember when you were explaining to me how the house was originally two identical apartments. Then we wrote about the fireplaces , well I found something kind of interesting. Almost finished with the preliminary hearing and on page 305 was testimony of Philip Harrington. They asked him what they found upstairs in the barn and after he talks about all the hay he says " There was an old fireplace that stood over in that north west corner, leaning against the side."
I wonder which one it was and why did Mr. Borden decide to save it?

[mbhenty]

Yes, Nadzieja:

Is that not interesting.

It is believed that that was the fireplace mantle that once sat in the sitting room in place of the 'Large Black Mantle' that's there now. Also it is the very same fireplace mantle which sits to the right of the 'Large Black Mantle' today and is used as a bookshelf.

Below are two photos. They are of the same room, and the same wall. One is the sitting room on the first floor. The other of Lizzie's room, which was once the sitting room for the second floor. Though it was called the 'Sitting Room' in Andrews day, and used as a sitting room by Andrew, when the house was built it was probably a dining room.

If you look at the photo of the sitting room below you can see the old 'smaller' fireplace mantle which is being used as a bookcase. If you look at the other photo you see a small pantry cabinet. It is very likely that there was one in the sitting room and removed at sometime, thus, it was once meant to be a dinning room. If you remember, Andrew took the two bedrooms on the first floor, combined them, and used that space as a dinning room.

[Nadzieja]

Now that is very interesting history to me. I loved those small built in cabinets, we had one in our first apartment which was the third floor of an old three decker.

That's right I forgot about Andrew taking down the wall to make the dining room. I'm surprised he didn't put in a small built in corner cabinet. It's amazing how many changes that house went through from being a two family to a single family. Then all the other changes. I think it was a pretty nice house, of course it's definitely not on the hill. I'm sure Andrew was very happy with it.