My girlfriend and I drove up to Wurtsboro, NY yesterday to see an open house that seemed too good to be true: the listing describes “Nestled on over eleven acres of serene, wooded land in a peaceful Sullivan County community, this classic six bedroom, one bath Victorian stands as a testament to timeless architecture.” A reasonable price with a simple expectation that work would need to be done, and certainly worth a day trip both for the sake of curiosity and a little fun on the road.
Just pulling up to the property revealed a lot of work needing to be done. Stepping inside the front double doors, one could see that someone had started to renovate, and either gave up out of frustration or ran out of money.
What was strange is that the listing wasn’t exactly accurate – it seemed to leave out a number of important details: one, there was a third two-story structure on the property (after the main house and garage), possibly a guest cottage or caretaker’s house? Two, it said “one bath” and yet there were two full bathrooms with showers and two half-baths or maybe more? Three, there was a main floor kitchen but upstairs on the 3rd floor there was another tiny kitchen. But most mystifying of all was that the third floor (which we thought was the attic), had numerous rooms, many of which were numbered. As you can see here below, “Room 22” leads to a small room, but there’s two more rooms branching off of this one. What’s going on here?
But let’s get back to the biggest question of all, the title of this blog post. Room 25. It was at the top of the stairs as one entered the third floor, but Room 25 and its closed door seemed to lead to … nowhere! There was a window next to door #25, and there was nothing outside. More clues (without answers) were found on the outside.
See that brown door up there near the top right? That’s the other side of the door to “Room 25.” My girlfriend and I joked that if we bought this house and had any unwanted visitors, we’d just tell them they’re staying in Room 25. But really, what’s going on here? One could assume there used to be another wing to this house, but I don’t know – there’s weather-worn exterior siding in place, the triangular shape and details match the dormer window details to the left and don’t appear to have ever been part of an interior. There is a gap under the door – was that a landing to a fire escape? That could be likely, as there was a vintage “Exit” sign by Door #25; but why would a fire escape exit have a room number?
Back to the question of a “single family” home with room numbers … one guess is that while it’s listed as a single family home, and probably has been that for the last 30 years, maybe at some point it was a boarding house? Online searches and ChatGPT did not give any solid answers, as both only uncovered public records online dating back 30 years or so, with no deed images or parcel histories listing a boarding house.
Then I had the idea, was this maybe some sort of historical Borscht Belt summer resort/getaway where the guests had assigned rooms, but nothing found online to confirm this. ChatGPT did suggest that there were Borsch Belt resorts in the area in the 1950s-1970s, and so it’s a possibility. Then I found a Facebook group related to Wurtsboro history and a guy responded that the “Goodman Family” used to own it in the 1970s, and they would know. I may be curious, but not curious enough where I’m going to track down the Goodman Family to ask. If I were going to buy this house, I might pursue it more, but the amount of work needed was overwhelming, and so I’m not.
But it’s interesting to see there was once a “Goodman’s Bungalow Colony,” a Borscht Belt getaway at Swan Lake, approximately 20 miles away, it’s not a stretch to think the same family had something catering to guests in Wurtsboro. If anyone sees this post and knows some answers they’d like to share, let me know.