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SERIES OF ADDITIONS |
The house
is an Italianate Victorian, which is almost emblematic of upstate New
York.
The abstract for the property shows that Joseph
H. Biggs purchased
the property in April 1855 from Margaret
McLallen,
the widow of John McLallen and sister-in-law to Mary McLallen
Treman.
Joseph
Biggs had married Melissa Pratt of Covert in 1854. In the summer of
1855
Biggs deeded over the Trumansburg plot to his father-in-law, Chauncey
Pratt.
In January 1856 the deed was transferred to the name of Melissa
Biggs.
It was during this interval that the original portion of what is now
McLallen
House Bed & Breakfast was built.
It
was
a hipped-roofed cube with high narrow windows and
a double front door on the right side of the house facing McLallen
Street.
Three of our four guest rooms (McLallen, Bradley and Riford Rooms) are
in the original portion of the house.
The
Biggs'
elder son, Chauncey, was born later in 1856. Their second son, Hermann,
was born in the house in 1859. Perhaps in response to the growth of
their
family, the eastern rooms (right side of the photograph) were added to
the original house.
The
eastern addition was
built in the same Italianate style as the original, but it has a low
gabled roof. My brother,
a carpenter
with experience in historical renovation,
examined
the workmanship in the addition and pronouced it identical to that in
the
original part of the house. In other words, it seems to have
been the work of the same builders. Today this addition includes the
Treman guest room.
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Further
additions were made to the back of the house later in the 19th
century.
The realtor's listing (when were first looking at the house) stated
that the house was built in 1870, which
may
(or may not) refer to the age of the latest significant
addition.
This part of the house is gabled and has more modest Colonial-style
proportions. We now
refer to it as 'the annex' and rent it by the week.
The
ceilings
in the northern addition are lower and the trim is simple. It
may
have been a
servants' quarters,
and as such represented the improving fortunes of the Biggs' family
business. Joseph Biggs was in the retail busines with his brother
David. In the early 20th century David's son William built the
Neo-Colonial home on Elm Street that is now Juniper Hill Bed and Breakfast.
Between
1856 and 1870 Joseph Biggs bought three lots adjacent to his property
on
the corner of Bradley and McLallen Street. He first purchased
the
so-called "Catholic lot" on his east boundary. In 1861 he
purchased
the land between his north boundary and Seneca Street.
Finally, in
1870 he bought the triangular plot between McLallen and (Old) Main
Street.
In
the years after the Biggs family sold the property, the lot was
subdivided and the adjacent properties sold. Houses were built on two
of them (see map below). The triangular lot across McLallen Street
remains a village park, and the lot on Seneca was added to the property
at 26 McLallen Street.
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30
McLallen
Street in 1982. Elements now absent include the fire escape,
the
stairs at the west end of the front porch. Existing elements
absent
in the photo include the cupola, shutters, and front steps.
In the
map at right the carraige house has been sketched in; it has since been
torn down. Source: Building- Structure Inventory Form from NY
Division
for Historic Preservation filled out by James Warren for the
Preservation
Planning Workshop at Cornell.
A
SERIES
OF RESIDENTS
In 1904
Melissa Biggs sold the house and the property (Joseph Biggs died at age
50 in 1877) to the Wakeman family. The Wakemans transferred
the deed
to Clinton Osborn in 1911 and the house remained a private
residence
through the 1920s.
The
most
recent addition to the house, a single room tacked on to the north end,
may have been built when the building had its first incarnation as a
business.
In the 1930s it was a restaurant called The Colonial Inn.
After
a brief period as a rental property in the early 1940s, 30 McLallen
Street
became a rest home for the elderly and remained so through the
1950s.
This is the oldest stage of its evolution remembered by people in the
village
that we have talked with.
In
the
1960s the house was divided up into four apartments and rented
out.
It became
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increasingly ramshackle
through the years until it was standing
empty and derelict when Greg Hoffmire bought it in the late
1980s.
During the early part of Hoffmire's ownership the back of the carriage
house fell into the next-door neighbor's yard and the rest of the
structure
was torn down.
Intending
to make the place into a bed and breakfast, Hoffmire made major
renovations.
He had the floor plan altered from four apartments to a larger inn
portion
and a smaller keepers' residence. Fifteen years ago he was
foresighted
enough to realize that guests preferred private baths and had them
built
into each guest room. Many walls were moved or added in order
to
accommodate the new baths and closets.
In
addition
to new interior walls, new heat and hot water, plumbing and electric
systems
were installed. But in the end the business was not begun and
the
house was rented out as two (very large) apartments.
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December 3, 2004
FROM
NOW ON
The two-apartment
arrangement existed when we purchased the property in November
2003. A concrete ramp had been added to the west end of the
front
porch by enterprising tenants who wished to park their motorcycles out
of the rain.
The
whirlpool
baths in all the bathrooms had long since ceased functioning.
Carpeting
was worn out. Foundation shrubbery had become
overgrown. Lattice
work had been broken. It was, in short, a typical rental
property.
Actually it was nicer than most because the extended family who
occupied
both apartments when we
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bought the house
were quite fond of it.
We
needed
to replace things that had come to the end of their natural life (like
the carpeting), but most of our work has been cosmetic, the imposition
of our personal taste on this old house. We favor, as the
Victorians
did, deep saturated colors—inside and out—and the
walls have been painted
to reflect this predilection. We prefer the Arts &
Crafts aesthetic
to the Victorian, so furnishings of the house look something like they
might have in 1910 or so, with eclectic touches here and there because,
let's face it, it's the 21st century.
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Background
information on
the
Italianate
Victorian style:
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