Thursday 6 September 2012

The Front Bedroom...

Guess what? I will say it right here at the beginning - our Little Blue House was a brothel!

It was the last operating brothel in this small town, which wasn't so small when the brothel was in business. After the Gold Rush, the town remained popular with tourists, and the mining continued after the rush was finished.

The house, as I've mentioned before, was moved here from another small town which had become a ghost town. After it was moved to its current location, we are not sure who lived in it initially. But at some point the house was purchased by Eva Lambert Daniell, a gold rush madam. She had run brothels in several small towns. After she got married, Eva and her husband moved into the Little Blue House.

The house was a "seamstress shop." Eva's girls would apparently sit in the bay window, facing the street, perhaps sewing? Gentlemen would pass by, and I suppose if they liked what they saw, then they would get some tailoring done...

The girls worked in two cabins situated on the property. I will post some photos of those cabins in a future post.

Dresser in Bedroom

Here is a photo taken in the original bedroom. This would have been Eva and her husband's room. There is one window in the room, and it joins the front parlour, where it's separated with long, red curtains.

Antique Dresser

There are a few beautiful pieces of furniture in the room, and the dresser is my favourite. I wonder how old it is?

A Mystery

Whose initials are these?

The bedroom probably needs the greatest amount of work. The floor is on an angle, sloping quite severely in one corner of the room. There may be recent water damage in one of the walls there also. We must investigate soon.

The history of this house is amazing, and we are learning more about it all of the time. The fact that it was a brothel is intriguing.


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