Post by Joanna on Jun 24, 2015 2:05:26 GMT -5
Historic Haunted Frontier House for Sale
LEWISTON, N.Y. – One of Western New York’s most recognizable landmarks is up for sale. The Frontier House at 460 Center Street in Lewiston boasts almost 13,000-square feet, lots of rooms and, while it may be a bit of a fixer-upper, Bruce Andrews of Great Lakes Real Estate says the building is sound.
Lewiston, New York, is said to have been the earliest European settlement in the western reaches of what is now the Empire State. The first French explorer came to the location in 1615, and in 1719, another Frenchman – with permission of the Seneca Indians – built the first permanent structure, a trading post.
Frontier House was constructed as a hotel and stagecoach stop in 1824 by a group of local businessmen and was soon known as the finest hostelry in the region. Over the years, its illustrious guests included Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, President William McKinley, boxer John L. Sullivan, the Prince of Wales, Dewitt Clinton, singer Jenny Lind and South Carolina politician and orator Henry Clay.
The dining room was presided over by one George W. Rector. In the early 1840s, he moved about 20 miles east to Lockport on the Erie Canal, where he managed two other hotels. He was succeeded by his son Charles, who later opened his own oyster house, in Chicago.
Meanwhile, back in Lewiston, Frontier House was turned into a private home. Then it became a hotel again, then a boarding house for local factory workers, then a museum of local history with a restaurant attached. In 1973, the structure was damaged by fire and attendant water damage and in 1975, it was leased to McDonald's – which turned it into a burger emporium replete with “Golden Arches” out front.
So how did it get haunted? Frontier House was also a meeting place for Niagara County Freemasons and a disaffected member of the organization, one William Morgan, threatened to write a book revealing Masonic secrets. After being incarcerated briefly at Fort Niagara on trumped-up charges, Morgan was released – and disappeared. His body was never found, but the local rumor was that he had been killed by the Freemasons and his body immured in the walls of the hotel. Soon after his disappearance, hotel employees and guests began reporting strange occurrences – doors and windows opening and closing when no one was near them, unexplained banging in the middle of the night and silhouettes of old men glimpsed in empty rooms. When post-fire renovations were underway in the 1970s, tools and equipment would mysteriously vanish – though no bodies turned up between the walls.
An alternate theory of the haunting contends that a worker building Frontier House fell from a scaffold into the basement and it is his spirit that roams the building. Whatever their source, even under the Golden Arches, the hauntings appeared to persist. An ABC-TV reporter once cracked that customers “sometimes get a shake, even if they order a Coke.”
Today, Frontier House stands empty, the Golden Arches long gone. It has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places and the historic property is for sale. Built from stone in the Federal Style and just a few miles from Niagara Falls, The Frontier House is a worthwhile candidate for restoration and re-use. A national treasure and the crown jewel of the Village of Lewiston, the old building can be yours for around $1.7 million – ghosts included.
Sources: Mike Randall, WKBW News, June 16, 2015; Historic Lewiston, New York, and Coleman Andrews, The Daily Meal.
