The Old House - HOW big?

I was having a slow day at work and started doodling a layout of the Old House to see if I could get it to conform (roughly) to the exteriors.  and I suddenly realized that the place would have had to have had to be enourmous.  In 1795 for example we have:

The Residents
Joshua/Naomi
Jeremiah
Abigail
Barnabas
Sarah

The New Yorkers
Millicent
Daniel

The Guests
Andre
Nathalie
Josette

The Staff
Angelique
Vicki

That's twelve bedrooms.  And of course that doesn't even begin to include the number of servants they must have employed or had endentured (wasn't Ben endentured?) to keep up a household of that many.  Obviously, apart from Angelique (as Josette's maid) and Vicki as governess, all the other staff must have been housed in quarters separate from the main building.

Is anyone familiar with the standard layout of homes at that time?  Would the kitchens have been part of the main house or a separate outbuilding adjacent?  Would servants quarters be a part of that building?  I suppose there would have been room to take the monthly bath , but there wouldn't be any toilet facilities at the time, which would have consisted of chamberpot and the necessary house in the garden?

Working on plans for my country home that will look quite similar to the Old House,
Nelson

There's a house here in town that looks a lot like the Old House, even the size looks the same as the Old House exterior shots. They had an estate sale a few months back, so I browsed through with DS on my mind, and I couldn't believe how small and few the rooms were. I mean, the place is a mansion. I should take a picture of it sometime and post it here.

ooh!  Please do!

I think I will. 

It is incredible how small rooms were in those grand, old houses.  A beautiful mansion in my hometown was eventually converted into an art museum (I use to work there).  The various rooms became gallaries, and some of the bedrooms were so small that walls had to be removed, but others retained their original size.  Even the parlors, several of them that there were, were diminutive.  About the only chamber that was sizeable was the main entrance hall with its grand staircase.  One of the reasons that the rooms were tiny was, I read, to help preserve heat.  These palaces were constructed in the days before central heating, even if they had some form of furnace.  And because there was no central air, they were built in specific placements, with large windows in the rooms, to allow for cross ventilation with the doors open, taking advantage of any breeze during the summers.

By the way, that museum-sans-mansion is haunted and, yes, I did have "experiences" while working there.

Gerard

Working on plans for my country home that will look quite similar to the Old House,

I trust we will all be allowed to move in, along with all our servants and their different powers and agendas.

The only thing that makes the Old House look like a mansion from the front, the only view we get, I think, is the huge porch and columns.  (I need to know more architectural terms.)    Take that away, and from the front, there's no mansion at all.

I figure that the front (visible) end is the short end.   The house must be very long from back to front.   It's probably all along one very long corridor, or set of two corridors (2 stories).

I haven't been inside too many really old Northern federal-style mansions, but have had the chance to check out homes built at a similar time in D.C., New Orleans, Charleston and Savannah.  Yes, very often, the kitchens were housed in a separate building (I believe they wanted to reduce the risk of a fire damaging the main house), and often the servant's quarters were located in the kitchen and coach house buildings.  And the rooms were smaller than you'd imagine for a mansion.

FWIW, I always got the impression that Vicki and Angelique's rooms were in the third floor/attic area, but even so, twelve bedrooms is a lot for a house that didn't look so big to begin with.  Maybe the Old House is like Dr. Who's tardis - bigger on the inside than it is from the outside!  After all, just think of how huge the cellar was - it must've had at least seven or eight rooms.

Gerard, can you enlighten us further with stories about your haunted former place of employment?

Angelique's bedroom was definitely on the top floor because of the slanted ceiling.  I'm not so sure that Vicky's was, though.

I haven't heard of kitchens and servant quarters being housed in separate buildings in New England.  In the South, the weather would rarely be a serious problem, but in the North, I wouldn't want to be a servant bringing dinner in from a separate kitchen to the dining room during a snowstorm...but then, they didn't worry much about snowstorms at Collinwood.  On the other hand, maybe that was the reason for the maze of corridors below the Old House - but I don't think so.

I've had some fun imagining how people might be bunked together when the Dupres contingent arrived, if there weren't enough bedrooms for everybody.  That too seems an unlikely possibility, however.

Gerard, can you enlighten us further with stories about your haunted former place of employment?

The mansion was constructed around the turn of the century by one of the richest men in my hometown (if not, at the time, the richest).  It was a large, rambling Queen Anne style, with three floors (plus a full-sized attic and complete basement) and the ever-present tower.  The owner's wife became ill with cancer and died, leaving him heartbroken.  And as he was working through his grief, he contracted cancer causing a very slow, plainful decline towards death.  His valet had a small room next to him and would often spend the night listening to the agonizing moans of his charge.  In the morning, he would listen for movement, knowing it was time to go into the master bedroom.  One evening, the valet heard the usual moans and then silence.  In the morning, he heard no movement and figured the owner was finally in a state of fitfull sleep.  However, as the time passed, he and other servants became concerned and went into the bedroom to find their employer dead....he had committed suicide during the night, shooting himself in the head.  The thing is, no one heard the gun blast, either in the house or by neighbors.  The owner's grown children, who lived by that time elsewhere in the country, came back to deal with the estate, but they stayed in the house for only a short period and would not return to it, disregarding questions as to why.  Eventually, it was sold to another wealthy family who, after several decades, donated it to the city.  It was turned into a whole-bunch-of-everything museum, cluttered with local historical items, along with some art works.  By the seventies, all the historical items were given to other local historical foundations and it was converted into an art museum.  Rooms were remodelled into galleries (a few were restored to their original decorations) and a new, modern gallery wing was added.

When I started to work there, I heard from the other members of the staff about "strange happenings."  For example, one of the previous directors was working on a display alone one night after the museum closed when he heard his name being called and turned to see a rocking chair moving back and forth on its own.  He high-tailed it out of there.  As for what I experienced, they ranged the whole gamut.  "Less" erie were such things as the motion detectors registering movement in parts of the house when we knew no one was there.  At times, at night, doors would open - including locked outside doors - setting off the alarm system and no one was there.  I had too "more" spooky experiences.  One day, just two of us were there, no one else in the building, when suddenly heard the loud, horrendous, crashing sound of breaking glass coming from upstairs, from a room containing expensive ceramics.  Figuring a shelf had given away, we ran up there and found......nothing.  Did I mention that room was the builder's master bedroom, where he had committed suiciide?  One evening, we were closing and I went up to the second floor to turn off the lights in the various galleries.  I was standing on the top floor landing, just outside the door to the old master bedroom when suddenly I heard clearly and distinctly, right behind him, right where that door was, a long, agonizing moan.  Oh, I forgot to add one more strange occurrence.  I was on the third floor, which had served as the servants' residence, now closed to the public and used for storage, but most of the rooms were completely empty.  I opened the door to one room and for a moment, I saw it furnished with old, antique toys.  I turned away momentarily and when I looked again, it was......empty.  When I told the director what I had seen, he told me that in the days of the original family, it was the children's nursery and playroom.  Shades of parallel time?  Gerard and Daphne?

A year or so ago, I visited my old "haunt."  I told the docents that I had once worked there.  The two of them looked at each other with a you-ask-him expression and one said softly:  "When you worked here, did you - um - 'experience' things?"  I knew exactly about what they were inquiring. 

Oh, wait, one more thing.  At times, at night, when I and/or others would drive past the museum, we would see that the light would be on in one of the second floor windows, even though it had been shut off at closing time.  In the morning, it would be off.  The room?  Not the master bedroom, but the valet's room next to it.  Maybe he now keeps an occasional vigil, hoping this time to hear the anguish of his charge which he, or anyone else, had not heard that first time a century ago.

Gerard

The Collins who designed the old house must have traveled into the future for the design because  the Greek Revival period was around 1840. 

Gerard - love the story of your former place of employment.  I don't suppose you care to share with us the name of the mansion and its location?

alwaysdavid - you're so right!  Have always thought that the Old House would've in real life been more along the lines of a big colonial-style saltbox.  But the Spratt House was a fantastic choice - it really had the right atmosphere.  I wonder how many rooms it had.

BTW, I've seen some old pics of Jonathan Frid dressed as Barnabas, that were taken inside an abandoned mansion.  Does anyone know if those pictures were taken in the Spratt House?

Gerard - love the story of your former place of employment.  I don't suppose you care to share with us the name of the mansion and its location?

Because the apparent haunting is somewhat of a "secret" among people involved in the museum (staff, former staff, etc.) as knowledge of it would be an "embarrassment", I really can't provide the name here, but if you send me a private e-mail requesting it, I'd be happy to oblige!

Gerard

The Old House was probably built prior to 1776.  The style may have been similar to Mt Vernon or Monticello.

Thanks so much for the retelling of your experiences Gerard! Very spooky. I love ghost stories.

Speaking of small rooms, I was very surprised at last year's fest when we went to Lyndhurst, at just how small the rooms in that house are. And the "long, wide," hallways that seem to be in existence in the movie certainly do not exist there. The hallways were long, yes, but very narrow. The rooms were very small compared to their enormity on screen. I find that this is the cast in most older houses as well, no matter where they are located.

And Gerard, great stories! Thanks for sharing!