public

Heavily Investigated

Eight people died inside these walls, and some say none of them truly left. Since Gertrude Tredwell — the last of her line — passed away here in 1933, visitors have reported phantom violet perfume drifting through empty hallways, piano music rising from a room with no one in it, and the sound of footsteps descending the stairs long after closing. A woman in a brown Victorian dress is said to appear in the parlor doorway, watching. Stand in the front room long enough and the air does something it shouldn't — and you start to wonder whether Gertrude is still taking inventory.

Built in 1831–32 by hatter-turned-speculator Joseph Brewster, this four-story Federal-brick, Greek Revival–interior row house was purchased in 1835 by hardware merchant Seabury Tredwell, who moved in with his wife Eliza, eight children, and four Irish servants. The family occupied it for nearly a century — an almost supernatural feat of inertia in a city that tears everything down. Youngest daughter Gertrude died there in 1933, never having married, never having left. A cousin saved it from sale and opened it as a museum in 1936; it was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1965. The record calls it a preserved domestic interior. The city calls it something else entirely.