You Can Buy Lizzie Borden’s House

The Massachusetts home where the alleged ax murderer lived for over three decades is on the market for a cool $890,000.

By Jessie Schiewe

306 French Street, where Lizzie Borden lived until her death. (Credit: Redfin)

What do you do when you’re acquitted of murdering your father and stepmother with an ax?

If you’re Lizzie Borden, you’d use the inheritance from their deaths to buy a mansion for yourself in the very same town where your family was killed. 

From 1893 until her death from pneumonia in 1927, the infamous alleged murdereress lived in a three-story Queen Anne Victorian mansion in her hometown of Fall River, Massachusetts. At the time, the house was considered “modern,” having been built seven years before Borden moved in with her live-in maids, a housekeeper, and a coachman. 

Borden, who started going by “Lizbeth” after her jury-trial acquittal, dubbed the house “Maplecroft,” most likely because of the maple trees that were on the property. She even had the word engraved into the top step of the granite staircase that leads to the front door. 

And now that very house — located at 306 French Street —  is for sale, listed for a cool $890,000.

To be clear, it is not the building where the grisly double homicide of 1892 occurred, for which a then-32-year-old Lizzie Borden may or may not have committed. That house, located on 230 Second Street in the same New England town, has operated as a destination bed and breakfast since 1996. 

The Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast where Borden’s father and stepmother were murdered on August 4, 1892. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons/dbking)

It’s owned by Donald Woods and Leeann Wilber who are also the owners of Borden’s Maplecroft mansion. The pair bought the secondary structure in 2018 for $500,000 from its previous owner, Kristee Bates of Texas, who had spent two years restoring the home to its former glory, The Herald News reports. 

Located on a half-acre plot, the 4,000-square-foot house is a historic architectural marvel. It has seven bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms, two enclosed porches, and no less than six fireplaces, each with “exquisite mantle pieces,” according to the property’s Redfin listing. It features coffered ceilings, as well as a tin ceiling in the kitchen, along with walnut wainscoting, inlaid parquet and tile floors, and stained glass windows. The house also has a large backyard and a two-car garage that used to have its own gas pump, which Borden installed.

The staircase and entryway in Maplecroft mansion. (Credit: Redfin)

Maplecroft mansion’s dining room. (Credit: Redfin)

One of the home’s enclosed porches. (Credit: Redfin)

Before Wilbur and Woods listed the property on August 24 of this year, they had intended to turn it into a secondary B&B for fans of the Lizzie Borden story. They spent $200,000 making infrastructure repairs to the old home, including updating its fire-suppression sprinkler system. 

Despite their investments, Wilbur and Woods decided to sell Maplecroft mansion after the city of Fall River intervened, placing additional renovation requirements and other conditions on the proposed business. Top on their list of grievances were the city’s insistence that they install an elevator and its mandate that they run the B&B as a privately owned enterprise instead of as a limited liability company, which is how their Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast is operated. (In addition to renting rooms at the former crime site, Wilbur and Woods also sell gruesome Borden-themed merchandise, such as a $25 “Bloodied Hatchet” and $10 blood-splattered pillow cases.)

Lizzie Borden, photographed in 1890 at the age of 30, two years before the murder of her father and stepmother. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

According to The Herald News, it was due to the coronavirus pandemic that the owners decided to finally abandon their second Borden venture. They are now selling it for roughly $400,000 more than what they purchased it for and are including the home’s many antique furnishings — such as wood-carved bed frames, crystal candelabras, lace curtains, upholstered Chesterfield sofas, and a grand piano — in the price tag. 

As for the ghosts rumored to live on the property? They, too, come free of charge. 

JESSIE SCHIEWE IS THE EDITOR OF OK WHATEVER. SHE BELIEVES IN UNICORNS AND SHE THRIFT SHOPS FOR EXERCISE.

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