Elbert Hubbard's Arts and Crafts Utopia, Still His in Spirit
40 S Grove St, East Aurora, NY 14052
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$$
Hotel rates vary by room type and season. Fine dining restaurant on-site; pricing in the upper-moderate range. Call 716-652-5552 or book via the hotel website for current rates.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Historic building with elevator and accessible accommodations available
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1905 · Arts and Crafts Movement · National Historic Landmark · Elbert Hubbard Legacy · Lusitania History · Western New York Heritage
Elbert Hubbard arrived in East Aurora in 1894 and founded the Roycroft printing press the following year, drawing on William Morris's English Arts and Crafts movement as his model. The enterprise grew from a printing operation into a full community of craftspeople — furniture makers, leather workers, metalworkers, bookbinders — producing handmade goods and hospitality for visitors drawn to the experiment.
The Roycroft Inn opened in 1905 to accommodate those visitors. Hubbard designed it to embody his principles: fine craftsmanship, warm materials, the dignity of handwork over industrial production. The building was extended and modified in later years but retains the Arts and Crafts character of the original construction.
Hubbard's death on May 7, 1915, was an event of some public consequence. He and his wife Alice Moore Hubbard booked passage on the RMS Lusitania, which was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine in the Irish Sea. Witnesses reported seeing Elbert and Alice standing on the deck together as the ship went down; neither body was recovered. He was 58.
The Roycroft campus passed through various stewardships after Hubbard's death. The Inn itself was maintained as a boarding house for a period before returning to hotel operation. The Roycroft Campus Corporation now manages the campus; the Inn was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1986. It continues to operate as a full-service hotel and fine dining restaurant at 40 South Grove Street.
Sources
The case that Elbert Hubbard haunts the Roycroft rests partly on his documented attachment to the place he built — he designed the Inn, shaped its character, and spent the most productive years of his life there — and partly on the accumulated witness accounts that have developed over the decades since his death.
The phenomena reported across the property are consistent in their pattern: footsteps in corridors where no one is walking, objects displaced in guest rooms, lights activating without apparent cause, voices heard in empty rooms. The campus and Inn share these accounts; the phenomena are not localized to a single room or area. Several witnesses over the years have reported seeing a figure looking out from windows in the Inn and on the campus grounds.
Mason Winfield, a paranormal historian who has written extensively about western New York, leads annual walking tours of the Roycroft campus through his Haunted History Ghost Walks enterprise. These tours have run since at least 2024 and explore what Winfield describes as sacred architecture embedded in the campus buildings — proportions, geometric arrangements, and structural symbols associated with Rosicrucian tradition. Hubbard's rumored connection to such organizations adds a layer to the campus's unusual atmosphere that extends beyond simple ghost story.
Hubbard's body was never recovered from the Lusitania wreck. His wife Alice's body was not recovered either. Whatever the content of the accounts that have accumulated at the Roycroft, the question of what happened to Elbert Hubbard in the Irish Sea on May 7, 1915, remains open in the literal sense.
Notable Entities
Sleep in one of the Inn's uniquely designed suites in the building Elbert Hubbard opened in 1905. Reported phenomena — footsteps in empty corridors, lights that cycle without apparent cause, figures seen at windows — occur throughout the property. The Hubbard-connected rooms on the upper floors are the most frequently cited.
Fine dining in the Arts and Crafts interior Hubbard designed to embody his philosophy of handcraft and beauty. The restaurant serves American cuisine with access to the Library Bar. OpenTable reservations recommended.
A seasonal 90-minute walking tour of the Roycroft campus led by author and paranormal historian Mason Winfield, departing from outside the Inn at 40 S. Grove St. Tours explore the campus's architectural mysteries, Rosicrucian symbolism embedded in the buildings, and decades of accumulated ghost accounts. Tickets available through Haunted History Ghost Walks; tours typically scheduled October.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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