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| Lizzie Borden’s Borden House Is Now a B&B — What Happened to Maplecroft? |
The two houses most closely linked to Lizzie Borden have taken very different paths since the notorious 1892 murders. The Borden family home at 230 Second Street in Fall River, Massachusetts, where Andrew and Abby Borden were killed, is now a functioning bed and breakfast and museum, while Maplecroft, the grander home Lizzie bought after her acquittal, remains a private residence. So, yes, the infamous Borden house really did become a B&B, although its modern life is considerably more organised than its history might suggest.
The original Borden home dates back to the 1840s, but Andrew Borden purchased and remodelled it in 1872. At the time, the property was chosen for practical reasons, including its location and access to the rest of Fall River. It would eventually become permanently associated with one of the most closely examined murder cases in American history.
Netflix’s Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story turns the house into an important part of its story, and understandably so: when a family home becomes the centre of a criminal investigation, every corridor suddenly seems to have a suspicious amount of historical significance.
Today, the Borden House is a bed and breakfast and museum, operated by US Ghost Adventures. The property has undergone restoration over the years, but much of its appearance is intended to reflect the period when Lizzie lived there. Some decorative elements have been recreated, while the original doors and hardware remain. That combination gives the house an unusual quality: it is both a preserved historical property and a place built around a story that has never stopped attracting curiosity.
Visitors can stay overnight in two suites named after members of the Borden family, alongside four additional rooms associated with people connected to the case, including John Morse, Bridget Sullivan, the district attorney and Lizzie’s defence lawyer.
The property also operates as a museum, with visitors able to see period objects, case-related artefacts and other memorabilia. There are conventional tours as well as more theatrical experiences, including ghost hunts around the house and cemetery. Because apparently learning about a notorious 19th-century murder case wasn't quite atmospheric enough without turning the lights down.
The Borden House has also become a venue for historical events, reenactments and period photography. It has been used as a filming location and can even be hired for weddings. That is certainly an unusual afterlife for a property once at the centre of a murder investigation, but it also reflects how completely the Borden story has become part of Fall River's tourism and popular culture. What was once simply a family home is now effectively a living historical attraction.
Maplecroft, meanwhile, followed a very different path. Three months after Lizzie was acquitted of killing her father and stepmother, she moved into the much larger Victorian property at 306 French Street, roughly a mile from the Borden family home. She purchased the house using her inheritance and gave it the name Maplecroft, apparently embracing a considerably more comfortable lifestyle than the one she had known at Second Street.
Built in 1887, Maplecroft was a three-storey Victorian house with seven bedrooms, six fireplaces and three-and-a-half bathrooms on a roughly 4,000-square-foot lot. It was also equipped with conveniences that would have made it an enviable property in its era, including electricity, indoor plumbing and hot and cold running water. After the grim austerity associated with the Borden home, Maplecroft represented something very different: money, space and the freedom to live on her own terms following the trial.
Lizzie remained at Maplecroft for the rest of her life. Her sister Emma Borden lived there with her for a period, but their relationship eventually became strained. Lizzie was known for entertaining and holding parties, particularly with friends from the theatre world, and the constant social activity reportedly became too much for Emma. She eventually moved away in 1905, leaving Lizzie to continue living at Maplecroft.
After Lizzie's death, Maplecroft changed hands several times. In 2018, it was purchased by the same owners who were associated with the Borden House at the time, and they considered turning it into another bed and breakfast. That plan, however, ran into an extremely modern obstacle rather than a Victorian one: the COVID-19 pandemic. The proposed conversion did not go ahead, and the property was put up for sale in 2021.
Maplecroft subsequently passed to Brooke and Michael Doherty, who remain its owners. Unlike the Borden House, Maplecroft is now a private residence, meaning visitors cannot simply walk in for a tour or book a room and expect to sleep where Lizzie spent her later years. For anyone hoping to recreate the full Borden experience, that is probably the disappointing part. One house welcomes tourists; the other quite reasonably has a front door that means “please stay outside”.
The contrast between the two properties is perhaps the most interesting part of their modern history. The Borden House has become a public attraction because of the events that happened there, preserving the setting and turning its dark reputation into a form of historical tourism.
Maplecroft, on the other hand, represents the life Lizzie built after the trial. It was the home she chose when she had money, independence and the chance to leave the original Borden property behind, yet its connection to her has ensured that people remain fascinated by it more than a century later.
There is also something quietly strange about the way both houses have survived. The Borden home has been transformed into an experience for visitors, complete with rooms, exhibits and tours built around its history, while Maplecroft has continued as an ordinary private house despite being associated with one of America's most famous unsolved historical mysteries. The buildings themselves have not changed places in the story, but the way people interact with them certainly has.
My view is that the fate of the two houses makes the Borden story even more intriguing than the mystery alone. The Borden House becoming a B&B sounds almost too perfectly bizarre, but it also makes sense because the property offers something few historical cases can: a physical setting that remains closely connected to the events. Maplecroft is arguably more fascinating because it represents what happened after the headlines, when Lizzie was no longer simply a defendant waiting for a verdict but a wealthy woman trying to construct another life.
The fact that Maplecroft is still private also gives it a different kind of mystique. You can tour the notorious old house, but the place where Lizzie actually spent most of her later life remains behind a closed door. Perhaps that is fitting. Not every piece of history needs to become an attraction, even when tourists would happily queue around the block for it.
For Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story viewers, the real history behind these properties adds another layer to the drama. The Borden House is still there, functioning as a museum and B&B, while Maplecroft is still standing but remains privately owned.
Neither property has disappeared into history, although they have ended up serving very different purposes. Which house do you find more fascinating: the infamous Borden home where the case unfolded, or Maplecroft, where Lizzie lived for decades after her acquittal?