Lizzie Borden Society Forum

What ever happened with Lizzies's French Street Mansion? The last I heard the lady from Texas that had bought and renovated it had been turned down by the city to make it into a B&B a la Second Street. I seem to remember her trying to sell out after that. And while on the topic how is Second Street doing? Did COVID destroy the business or is it doing well under new ownership?

Hi Steve! MB can probably give us the latest 'business' status of Maplecroft. I was in Fall River last month and walked by the house several times. Did not appear to be a business like the Second Street house. What struck me is that if I didn't know the history of the house, I would not have given it a second glance....so that emphasized the current owner isn't marketing it....at least outwardly.

Streets are the primary parking solution for the "Hill" area and the French street was packed around Maplecroft. Of course, the cars could have been due to the other homes.

Second Street seems to be doing ok. They really lean into the ghostly aspect and the owner owns other 'haunted' locations outside of Fall River which they have commercialized.

MB??

Yes

I lived next door to Maplecroft in a three decker once owned by Lizzie between 1990 and 2017. The Phoebe Davenport House.

Yes, Maplecroft was sold to the Texas lady, namely, Kristee Bates. Not long after she sold it to Donald Woods, who at the time owned the Second Street house.

Today it is owned by the Doherty Family, consisting of Brooke and Michael and they have three children, two boys and a girl. I think they are all under 10 years of age. Brooke is an artist and teacher. Not sure what her husband does, but it seams that the house is their exclusive residence and no business connections with the building. It appears that the Doherty family started to do repairs, like painting the house, but the work appears to be going slowly..., at least when it comes to re-painting the building.

Here's a funny story. I was caretaker of Maplecorft for a while. Not officially, you understand, but as a favor for a friend, Kristee Bates.

When Kristee Bates had the house painted they did a very lousy job. I watched them out my window. Their were countless issues that they were suppose to take care of but did not. They just painted over rotted siding, replacing gutters onto rotted facia trim, with the water coming off the roof and missing the entire gutter, and instead flowing behind it and rotting the facia. I told Kristee that she should have sued them.

The contractor had this huge dumpster in the yard which they filled and left behind, once they were finished working on the house, and would not have it taken away. Because they did not want to pay for dumping it. They were going to stick Kristee with it. I called the dumpster company and they told me that Kristee, or me, could not give authority to have it taken away. The authorization had to come from the contractor, who had called for it.

Kristee was very worried and wanted the dumpster gone. So I called the dumpster company a couple of days later and told them I was the contractor, gave them the contractor's name and the contractors address, and told them where to send the bill. The next day the dumpster was gone.

I pointed out all the problems they left behind but Kristee did not want to make anything of it. She was happy they were gone. But they did a lousy paint job and it just did not hold up. As for the gutters, I did a temporary repair. But, at the time, a more permanent repair would have been to take down the gutters and replace the facia board and extend the shingles so the water would flow into the gutter.
The gutter problem was not on the residence but the carriage house or garage.

MB, I checked out your former residence....you did a really nice job with the exterior remodel (what I could see from the sidewalk). I didn't realize you lived there almost 3 decades!!

Thanks Camgarsky for the kind words.

The Davenport House hasn't held up to badly considering No maintenance has been done in 15 years. Modern lumber has a tendency to rot easily unless you paint it every 3 or 4 years. And nothing has been done since I renovated it.

I was a one man construction company putting that building back together, inside and out. The porch posts were rotted from the bottom to two feet up. I had an estimate to duplicate them. It was like (If I remember) 1800 dollars a post. That's almost 9 thousand to just have the posts made up. So I cut the bottoms off and made new bases for the porch posts... to the best of my faulty ability.

I got an estimate of over 20,000 just to do the porch over. And that was to replace the posts with new ones from the box store. In the end it cost me around 2500 to do it myself.

I wanted to tear off all the cedars and redo the clapboards underneath, but they were in rough shape. So I sanded down the entire building, taking off 4+ coats of paint, right down to the bare shingles. (You can see an example in the first picture below) Burnt through 3 palm sanders. Washed and bleached down the entire building, with a coat of primer and two coats of paint.

And being a crazy person, I re-shingled the entire roof on the 3 decker by myself. The hardest part was carrying shingles up the ladder. Roofing shingles are heavy. The second picture is me roofing.

What did I do after selling the Davenport house?

I built a new home all by myself. Took me two and a half years. Although the town would not allow me to do electrical or plumbing. And the shingles on the roof were done by a contractor, after I fell off a ladder and broke things..., like body parts. Not a healthy occupation for a dude in his late 60s.

Somemore eye candy.

Re-doing the porch posts with new bases. As I mentioned in the post above, to the best of my ability.

I'm certain Lizzie would have approved.

Very nice! I am so envious of folks who have craftsman skills. That said, skills or no, I would never get up that high on scaffolding and roofs.

It would gnaw at me if I put so much love and effort into such a project and then the next person neglected it. I think I would probably avoid that street whenever possible!

p.s. I just received a copy of your book...'Point Road'. Looking forward to reading your work!

Yes

Why, thank you Mr. George.

I pray you enjoy the book. Although, once into it, if you don't, you must not feel compelled to finish it. I always read what I start, even if I am no longer enjoying it. But I have adjusted my reading habits and have broken that compulsion.

A couple of weeks ago I tried ready Huxley's A Brave New World. Read the first 100 pages and could not read any longer. Just not my style. Found his writing style very confusing. One of those stories where you have to go back and read the last page over because it felt like you skipped a page.

Just yesterday I finished reading A Clock with No Hands, by Carosn McCullers. Boy what a depressing story. From what I know all her work goes that way. Can't tell you how many times the "N" word is mentioned. It would have been difficult to give the characters their true constitution and prejudice temperament without it, I suppose. Dated. Realistic for the early south.

Trying to catch up on my classics. Perhaps A Tale of Two Cities, next. Haven't read Dickens since high school.

Also started writing my 4th Emily White novel. But tomorrow I'm going sailing.

And thanks for making an attempt at Point Road.