Portsmouth's 1763 Georgian Mansion Turned Elder Care Facility
346 Pleasant St, Portsmouth, NH 03801
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Private senior living facility. No general public admission. View the exterior from Pleasant Street.
Access
Limited Access
Urban residential street; exterior viewable from sidewalk
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1763 · National Register of Historic Places · Royal Province of New Hampshire · Colonial New England Architecture
The Georgian mansion at 346 Pleasant Street in Portsmouth was built around 1763 by Mark Hunking Wentworth, a prosperous colonial merchant, as a gift for one of his daughters. John Wentworth — Mark's son, who was appointed Royal Governor of New Hampshire in 1767 — made the house his home until 1775, when the onset of the Revolutionary War forced the last Royal Governor of the province to depart.
The building is recognized on the National Register of Historic Places and is considered one of the finest surviving examples of 18th-century domestic architecture in New England. A surviving detail in the parlor is particularly evocative: red-flocked wallpaper with a papier-mache border imported by Governor Wentworth in 1774, the year before he fled — it remains in place more than 250 years later.
In 1911, 16th-generation Wentworth descendants Charles and Susan Wentworth established the Mark H. Wentworth Home for the Chronically Invalid on the property, providing care for the chronically ill. The institution expanded over the following century: the Manor was added in 1927, and the Wentworth Building in 1987. All three were renovated in 2007.
In 2016, the organization changed its name to Wentworth Senior Living, reflecting a shift in institutional philosophy from long-term nursing care toward a broader assisted living and memory care model. The facility remains a private senior community and is not open to general public visitors.
Sources
The paranormal reputation of the Wentworth building is staff-sourced and specific in its geography: reports cluster in the oldest section of the structure, the 1763 mansion, and diminish in the newer additions. Night-shift caregivers working alone in that section have been the most consistent source of accounts.
The phenomena described are varied. Full-body apparitions that appear to speak — not merely silent shapes but figures that seem to communicate — are the most striking claim, and the one most frequently cited by former employees. Object displacement is common: items moved from where they were left to somewhere else, without any observable cause. Doors in the older wing open on their own; others refuse to open at all and then release without apparent reason.
Footsteps in empty corridors are the most frequently mentioned experience. One former 11pm-7am worker described hearing voices and the sound of doors closing in areas confirmed to be empty. The sensation of not being alone in a room — described without drama, as a practical occupational fact — appears in multiple independent accounts.
The building's history is an honest explanation for the density of reported phenomena: a facility that has housed people in the final stages of illness and aging since 1911, in a building that was already 150 years old when it was first repurposed for that function. As one former employee put it simply: a lot of people have died there. Some seem to have stayed.
View the 1763 Georgian mansion from the sidewalk on Pleasant Street in Portsmouth's historic district. The three connected structures — the Governor's Mansion, the Manor (1927), and the Wentworth Building (1987) — present the full arc of the property's history. The Governor's parlor wallpaper, imported by Governor Wentworth in 1774, survives inside.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
New Hope, PA
The Inn at Phillips Mill at 2590 River Road in New Hope, Pennsylvania was built by Aaron Phillips around 1756 as a stone barn. It is part of the Phillips Mill Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The property has operated as an inn for several decades and is among the older continuously occupied structures in Bucks County.
Rindge, NH
The Manor sits on land owned by Captain Asa Brewer (1837-1853) and later Zachariah Whitney, whose son sold it in 1902 to wealthy mahogany importer George D. Emory, who built the grand Manor House to entertain guests. After passing through several owners it became Davard's Manor Inn in 1948 and, in 1962, the founding building of Franklin Pierce College under Frank S. DiPietro.
Tuscaloosa, AL
The Drish House is an 1837 Greek Revival mansion with a later Italianate tower in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. It was built by Dr. John R. Drish, a physician, and his wife Sarah, on what was then a 450-acre cotton plantation worked by enslaved laborers. The house has served as a school, a church, and an automotive shop; it was restored in the 2010s and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.