Brownstone Detectives on TV
OK, all you house history fans! A certain TV network will be at Brownstone Detective H.Q. in May to begin filming an episode of a television series. The show will focus on the first family that lived in the house, The Corletts, and the “unfortunate occurrences” that seemed to emanate from the house in its early days. BAD LUCK? YOU DECIDE… It all started when the initial architect/builders of 738 Macon Street purchased the lot for the house and began building. About halfway through its construction, though, the house would go into foreclosure. About a year later, the man who would eventually finish building the house, Wilfred Burr, A.K.A. “Lucky 13,” would buy the foreclosure property in a tax sale. After the sale was completed, Burr had saved enough money in the purchase that he was able to add an additional floor to the home, increasing its number of rooms from 9 – to 13. Finally, after Burr completed the house, it would become the 13th house on the block. But the the odd luck didn’t end there. When the Corletts moved into 738 Macon Street, all seemed to be smooth sailing until the family matriarch, Margaret, passed away. Like dominoes, every year thereafter, until 1900, a Corlett would die – Margaret’s son, John; her son-in-law, Robert; and her daughter, Eleanor. At this point, Margaret’s remaining child, Robert, decided presumably to get his family away from the house. He sold the property to a flipper and moved the family to […]
Hijinks on Herkimer, Pt. II
(To see Pt. I of Hijinks on Herkimer) It was not too long before, on one specific occasion, Wolfram took notice of Clayton approaching and entering their apartment building. Wolfram must have had a mouse’s ear, because he discerned from the top floor of the building that Ransom had not come upstairs but had entered an apartment on one of the first two floors. Wanting further evidence against Mrs. Oakley, Wolfram slipped down the stairs and went around the side of the house and “walked slowly by” the windows attached to Mrs. Oakley’s apartment, one of which belonged to her bedroom. As the blinds to the flat were “just a little open,” Wolfram peered though and saw the married man, Ransom, in Mrs. Oakley’s bedroom, a scandalous show of moral laxity at the time. Two nights later, Wolfram viewed Ransom returning to the apartment building and, subsequently, to Mrs. Oakley’s apartment. Wolfram must have drawn murmurs from the gathered crowd in the courtroom when he said what he observed next: Ransom did not depart Mrs. Oakley’s apartment until 6 am the following day. Determined, on the third try, to get the evidence that he needed to have Oakley banished from his building, Wolfram decided he would convince himself once and for all that what he had seen was enough to have her removed. Going out into the house’s front yard, he took a piece of thin wire with him and “fastened it to the gate so that when it was […]
