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A beautiful house or an advertisement? What you don’t know about the Pink House in Wellsville
BY KATHRYN ROSS
WELLSVILLE — “If you ask people what they know about Wellsville, they tell you about the Texas Hot, the David A. Howe Library — and the Pink House,” said Christina Wightman as she opened her talk during a recent recent Tuesdays With Grace. The Pink House was constructed between 1866 and 1869 by Edwin Bradford Hall and his wife, Antoinette, whose portrait is one of the many paintings hanging in the house. Wightman, the town of Willing historian and a Thelma Rogers Genealogical and Historical Society trustee, explained that Antoinette was the daughter of a civil engineer who moved his family to Wellsville in 1847, when just 400 or so people lived in the village. Edwin Hall arrived in Wellsville in 1852 and from a pharmacy owned by his uncle, built a successful business that catered to the needs of the rapidly growing community. He rose to prominence after the railroad was built through the town. The store, which still stands today, closed in the early 1970s, and is now the location of the Beef Haus. In the store, Hall sold morphine, opium, and leeches and
Photos provided Wellsville’s Italianate-style house, known as the Pink House, is located on West State Street past the high school.
also sold books, dynamite, alcohol, glass, oil and mixed paint. He offered the use of a vault and a soda fountain to his customers. “Some have speculated that the house’s pink paint color, mixed by Hall himself, was an advertisement for his paint business,” Wightman said. She went on to say that the Italianate design of the house was inspired by the Halls’ wedding trip to Lake Como, Italy. However, a similar home, the Thompson House, was built in Bridgeport, Conn., and Hall lived near it in his youth and it may have inspired the design.
Five generations of the Hall family have owned the house, which is currently owned by movie producer Jay Woelfel and his businessperson wife, Kristy, who live in California for most of the year. In between the Woelfels and the Halls, the house was owned by Fannie and John Carpenter, Florence and Norman Woelfel, Ruth, Ann, Julian (Marcile) Woelfel and Bradley, Jack and Jay Woelfel. After several years of disuse, the interior and exterior were restored by Julian and Marcile, who lived in Chicago, but often visited the family home in Wellsville. They also opened
The Pink House features Victorian treasures and is decorated with objects of art from the era.
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fell into the fountain in the front of the house. She drowned while her grandfather, confined to a wheelchair due to a debilitating disease, watched, but couldn’t help. The fountain was filled in for decades and used as a flower bed. It has recently been restored. Wightman said, “Marcile told me, ‘There is a difference between a house being haunted and people being haunted.’” The Pink House is two stories with a basement and a copula on the roof. The first and second floors each encompass 3,244 square feet and include eight bedrooms and two full bathrooms and two half bathrooms. The thirdfloor tower is lined with chestnut wood and features 10-foot-square balconies with iron supports on all sides. The basement offers 3,413 square feet and includes 14 separate rooms, two furnaces and a separate entrance that would have been used by servants. The woodwork decorating the doorways, siding and staircases was carved from black walnut and chestnut by Germen craftsmen, who also carved the woodwork in the Lutheran church.
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it to the community on occasion. Jay Woelfel and his wife continue that tradition, highlighting Halloween and Christmas decorations as well as hosting occasional tours and providing a backdrop for prom photos and weddings. Julian passed away in 2017, and Marcile passed away in 2020. Wightman said Marcile always denied the common belief that the Pink House is haunted. She explained that the belief perhaps started with the suicide of Antoinette’s sister, Mary Francis Farnsworth, and the tragic drowning of 2-year-old Beatrice Carpenter. The child
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