1870 Victorian Mansion on Memphis's Millionaire's Row
680 Adams Ave, Memphis, TN 38105
Age
All Ages
Cost
$
Standard museum admission for self-guided and docent tours.
Access
Limited Access
Three-story Victorian mansion with stairs between floors.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1870 · French Victorian architecture · Memphis Millionaire's Row · Yellow fever epidemic history · National Register of Historic Places
The Woodruff-Fontaine House was built between 1870 and 1871 as the Memphis residence of Amos Woodruff, a New Jersey-born carriage manufacturer who had become one of the wealthiest businessmen in post-Civil War Memphis. The three-story French Victorian residence on Adams Avenue, part of a street known locally as Millionaire's Row, features Mansard roof lines, carved hardwood staircases, and imported European furnishings. According to historic-memphis.com and the Memphis 100, Woodruff sold the home to merchant Noland Fontaine in 1883; the Fontaine family lived in the house until 1928.
Mollie Woodruff Henning, daughter of Amos Woodruff, lived in the house during years of personal tragedy. According to multiple Memphis-history sources, Mollie's first husband died of yellow fever shortly after their marriage, and a child she bore from a later marriage died in infancy. These losses, all centered on the house's second-floor bedroom now called the Rose Room, anchor the building's later folklore.
The city of Memphis acquired the property in 1936. After standing largely vacant for several decades, the house was restored as a museum and opened to the public in 1962 under the management of the Association for the Preservation of Tennessee Antiquities. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and operates today as one of the most-visited historic-house museums in Memphis.
Sources
Folklore at the Woodruff-Fontaine House centers on the Rose Room, the second-floor bedroom historically occupied by Mollie Woodruff Henning. Mollie endured a series of losses while living in the house, including the deaths of an infant child and a husband. Local tradition holds that her presence returns to the room where she was reportedly happiest.
Docents and visitors have, over decades, described a faint scent of roses in an otherwise empty room, the impression of a figure seated on the Rose Room bed (with reports of a slight depression in the bedspread after the figure has vanished), and the glimpse of a woman in a long pale gown drifting in the upstairs corridor. The phenomena are described as gentle rather than threatening, and the museum incorporates the lore into its public programming during Halloween-season tours.
Regional paranormal investigators have, according to Action News 5, certified the house among Memphis's actively reported haunted sites. The mainstream historic and architectural significance of the home, however, is independent of the folklore: the building is a leading example of French Victorian residential design in the American South.
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Tour the 1870 French Victorian mansion on Adams Avenue, Memphis's historic Millionaire's Row. The second-floor Rose Room is the room most often referenced in visitor and docent reports of the woman associated with the house's folklore.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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