Ancient Web: Hudson Valley Ruins Traced Dark Shadows' Lost House

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

Fans of Dark Shadows remember Barnabas Collins's Old House. Rob Yasinsac went looking for the real building, which had the unfortunate habit of burning down.

Read the Hudson Valley Ruins Old House essay

The article identifies the filming location as a mansion in Tarrytown, New York, next to the better-known Lyndhurst estate. It had stood empty for years by the time it appeared in the 1960s gothic soap opera. Exterior photographs became part of the series' fictional Collins family world. The author points out that the physical house and the fictional location need not share a history.

Instead of stopping at a filming-location identification, Yasinsac follows the estate back through nineteenth-century Hudson River wealth. Moses Hicks Grinnell built a house known as Wolfert's Dell; a neighboring mansion later acquired multiple names. The property passed through family, social, and financial changes over decades.

A television set with an actual address

A 1907 ownership change brought Russell Hopkins and Vera Siegrist into the picture. The couple used the name Veruselle for their estate, and the buildings became known as the Colonnades and Arcades. Later, one building became the Spratt House. The succession of names helps explain why identifying a surviving postcard can be harder than simply searching for 'Dark Shadows house.'

The page combines historical illustrations, newspaper references, estate postcards, Library of Congress photographs, and images of surviving grounds. One view is explicitly dated December 31, 2006, comparing the site with an earlier postcard.

The building associated with Dark Shadows burned in 1969, the author reports, and only foundation remnants survive. He distinguishes it from the neighboring Grinnell mansion, which had burned earlier, in 1963, and whose ruins were demolished in 1978. Two vanished houses, a few familiar television shots, and several similar historical names make for a surprisingly tangled story.

Yasinsac's original Hudson Valley Ruins copyright line begins in 1997, and the broader Tarrytown section places this house alongside other abandoned or altered sites.

This is fan history done with the tools of local architectural research. A fictional haunted mansion sent someone back into the documentary history of real owners, buildings, and land.

Explore the Old House research and images.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.