Demolition of the Leary Press Begins!

by Kat Koorey

First published in June/July, 2005, Volume 2, Issue 3, The Hatchet: Journal of Lizzie Borden Studies.

On April 21, 2005, the new owner of The Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast, Lee-ann Wilber, announced on the Lizzie Borden Society Forum, “Wednesday April 27, 2005 7:30 AM . . . DEMOLITION BEGINS!”

This exciting and long-awaited proclamation ushers in a new era for the Borden House and its lengthy history of struggling to survive. 92 Second Street was constructed in 1845 by 34-year-old Fall River builder Southard Miller. Charles Trafton is recorded as the first owner/tenant, Donald Wood and Lee-ann Wilber are the latest. With fantastic vision, good planning, and a dependable staff, plus a discernment of the important status of the house, Wood and Wilber are renovating the outside of the house and its yard back to its original layout—something no previous owner had ever attempted. 

Martha McGinn and partner Ron Evans, co-owners of 92 Second Street until 2004, were responsible for the interior’s wonderful reconstruction and decoration in 1996. Martha had acquired the house from her grandparents, and had lived there in her youth.

John McGinn, Sr., Martha’s grandfather, bought the house in 1948 without telling his wife Josephine. He wanted to move his already established Leary Press to the property and live next door to his business. From all accounts, Josephine was livid. There was no yard, no grass, and no garden, so to placate her he invested in a summer place in Westport where she could retire from the city at times and enjoy the country.

John not only didn’t want to walk to work, but he didn’t want to be out in the rain or snow to go next door, so he had the door and frame installed from the kitchen to the Press, probably sometime in 1949. From a newspaper interview at the house in 1980, he states, “ ‘There was a lot of commotion around 1949 when I had carpenters in here redoing the place. They found a hatchet in the wall and the police were all over the place. They sent it up to Boston for analysis. But I knew what it was,’ McGinn said, laughing at what had been a private joke.”

The private joke, according to the ever-helpful and eminently organized author Len Rebello, was that the hatchet trick was a hoax, planted there by John, knowing the workers would find it. Len explained that not only was that John’s typical sense of humor, but that there was precedent. Citing a May 1949 news item, Mr. Rebello describes the fact of another hatchet being found during the destruction of the barn in 1929, which later was admitted to be a hoax. It was also put there to be found and thus cause a sensation. The newspaper of 1949 explained the ramifications of that act as leading to the public’s future disbelief and that any hatchet found later would necessarily be looked at “askance.”

In 1949, the paper reports, carpenter Victor Aubrey found an ax in the ruins of the chimney in the cellar. It is not clear if this was the one hidden by John McGinn, he of the “lively blue eyes” and a “chain-smoking habit.” The timing suggests that it is.

John may have been given the idea by an act perpetrated by a previous owner, Mandel Mark. “The guy who owned this place before me, one hell of an athlete in his day, Sharky Mark, used to keep that hatchet around . . . Whenever he was short of money to buy a few—you know what I mean—he used to have people come here for a fee and he’d drag out that old hatchet, swearing it was the one that Lizzie used,” McGinn was quoted. Since legend has it that the original hatchet was never found, previous owners of the house could have a bit of fun with its duplicate.

This interview with John McGinn corresponded in time to when the Silvias were putting Maplecroft, the Borden sister’s French Street house, on the market for sale. There was the suggestion at that time (1980) by a Fall River City Council member that both properties should be acquired by the city “for historical reasons and to bring in tourists.” But the Borden murder house was not for sale. Coincidently, Frank Silvia acquired Maplecroft the same year as McGinn bought #92 Second Street.

Quite a few McGinns lived in the large house on Second Street and a few changes were made to accommodate everyone. Probably with a twinkling eye, John told the reporter “All that remains of the original house is the front hall and the back hallway . . . pointing to the original front door and closet just inside [the foyer].” Bill Pavao, former resident curator of the house during its restoration to museum status in the late 1990s, when queried as to the veracity of this broad statement, replied that it wasn’t wholly true and pointed immediately to one contradiction: the sink room which existed in the Borden’s day, near the back stairs in the rear hallway, had at some time had its door sealed over to produce a continuous wall.

McGinn also claimed “this place was torn apart 10 times for anything from a rooming house to a factory for kewpie dolls and buttons and buckles before I bought it.” Mr. Pavao explains not nearly that many changes had been made to the house, implying a bit of exaggeration on the part of the interviewee or a misquote by the reporter. Bill continued by listing the changes he could document and verify which were several modifying features, but not anything that couldn’t be renovated back to the state the house was in under Andrew Borden’s regime.

According to a news item in Rebello from the Evening Standard, 31 January 1961, entitled “Lizzie’d Find Old Home Familiar,” John McGinn’s mother was the source of the information about the use of the building next door and the house itself. She was resident at that time on the second floor. Her description was that “ ‘Cement and tar replace the old lawn, and a printing shop clicks, clanks and whirs where a pear tree once bore fruit . . . If you stand in front of the old house you would see the holes in the low granite wall where the iron fence was once secured.’ The house was a boarding house. The adjoining shop was once a button factory. Kewpie dolls were reportedly made or manufactured in the barn.”

Mr. Rebello offered another snippet of information from the article over the phone—that the button factory supported “an old couple,” and when their sons took over, hoping to make their fortune, they imported an English soccer team to this country and housed them at #92 (then #230). Reportedly, the athletes were put to work manufacturing kewpie dolls in the barn to keep them out of mischief.

From the 1920s onward, the house continued to exist due to its association with any sort of manufacturing that took place next door at #94 (then #234)—from buttons to stationary to press. By the time John McGinn moved in his operation, Smart Advertising, the place needed to be put back into shape and he probably added the section that finally filled in the back yard. The building had grown and wrapped around the house, but in Bill Pavao’s memory as a young friend of the family, he recalls that the driveway was clear and one could go all the way up the drive and then turn right to park behind the house. This was the area taken over by an expanding Leary Press, until the structure just about filled the whole lot, property line to property line.

According to Bill, modifications to the house in his lifetime were made for the convenience and taste of the McGinns. Josephine and John’s bedroom was the dining room and she required that an archway be established in the middle of the room, possibly where the old partition had been originally when Andrew bought the place and which he had removed, creating his dining room. She preferred an archway to take the place of the door between the sitting room and parlor that required the removal of the door and frame. She had the door that connected the dining room with the kitchen walled up for privacy, and the kitchen refrigerator was put there. The stove was located where the refrigerator is now, to the east, and where the big stove is now situated there was the McGinn’s kitchen table and chairs, and a window was added over the sink on the east back wall.

Eventually, John Sr.’s mother was housed on the second floor, the area set up like her own apartment, and Lizzie’s bedroom became her dining room, the family gathering there at holiday meals. It was probably at this time, as there was a need for a buffet, that Lizzie’s shallow closet was converted to shelving and cupboards for china storage. At some period an aunt came to stay and her bedroom was Abby’s dressing room. Andrew and Abby’s bedroom had been, once again, converted to a kitchen to serve the second floor apartment. Thus the master Borden’s bedroom had been first built as a kitchen in a two-tenant property in 1845, renovated by him into his master suite in 1872, returned to kitchen status in the late 1940s for Mrs. McGinn senior and, under Ron Evans in the 1990s, returned to master bedroom state to replicate the Borden era while preparing the house for a B&B. This room probably suffered the most drastic changes over time, including a window being “lost” sometime on the east wall when a bathroom was installed. The pipes for this convenience taking precedence over a window and so there no longer is a symmetry of windows in the view of the house from the back yard, as was there when the house was first designed and built, and through the Bordens residency there.

Over time, Martha McGinn left her home and moved in with her grandparents, John and Josephine. She was given Emma’s room. Martha’s father followed, also leaving home, to move in with his parents. As far as it is recalled, he took over the “Jennings” room in the upper story attic.

After Martha acquired the house, her friend Ron Evans helped to restore the residence to its 1890s standards and appearance, keeping the bathrooms, of course. He had a contractor replicate and install the door and frame to the parlor from the sitting room, removing that added arch and the arch in the middle of the dining room, and consequently returning the dining room to its former use. He had the doorway returned between the dining room and kitchen and added a large cooking stove which was common to the era. Each room was given back its particulars to return them to their former use. 

In 1996, most of the windows were torn out and replaced and put out for trash. Therefore a few close friends ended up with original house windows, Bill being one. George Quigley was given a window from Lizzie’s room, as was Bernie Sullivan. Bill’s window came from the guest room. The sitting room and cellar windows are still original as are the cellar bars. The front door is original, but it is not proven that the locks on it are from the Borden days, though they are very similar. The side door is original, though of course not the screen door, and the interior doors were also there in Lizzie’s day, and as built.

It was due to Ron Evans’ innate understanding and vision, and with the help of case scholars such as Bill Pavao and Len Rebello, that the house could finally be returned to the former standing it once enjoyed as a single-family home under Andrew Borden’s care. Interestingly, 92 Second Street managed to survive the century by clinging to a clunking factory building. Now that the 9,000 square foot bodyguard has done its duty and outlived its necessity, that part is finally being torn to dust, demolished so that #92 can one again experience that sweet spring southern light of Fall River in its sitting room, where the Borden family once gathered in their more peaceful days.

Works Cited:

Black, Andrew. “For Sale: Fine Victorian House, Refurbished by Heiress Known For Her Determination To Do A Job Right.” Boston Globe. 30 April 1980.

Pavao, Bill. Telephone Interview. 7 May 2005.

Rebello, Len. Lizzie Borden Past & Present. Fall River: Al-Zach Press, 1999.

Rebello, Len. Telephone Interview. 7 May 2005.