The Home

The Pink House was designed in an Italianate villa style around a central block and tower with wing bays added. Construction began in 1866 and completed in 1869.  The exterior is with flush board siding and sawdust installation which was the standard of the time. The original roof was tin and replaced later with a rubber membrane. The interior was originally furnished with Victorian era furniture and with some of the renovated pieces still in the house, which helps maintain the Victorian aesthetic.

It is 1514 above sea level and is built six feet higher than the ground to avoid flooding from the neary Genesee River.  From the tower, you have an impressive view of Wellsville and its surroundings.

The first and second floors each have 3244 square feet with eight bedrooms and two bathrooms.  The third floor tower is lined with chestnut wood and ten feet square sturdy balconies with iron supports on all sides.   The basement has 3413 square feet with fourteen separate rooms with two furnaces and a separate entrance to the outside which would have been used for servants.

The first floor consists of double parlors, living and music room, dining room, tv room, kitchen and pantry. Plus a bedroom and bathroom off the kitchen.  There are two staircases leading up to the second floor with six bedrooms and two and a half bathrooms.

The design was inspired by the home of Eli J. Thompson in Bridgeport Connecticut, a close friend of P.T. Barnum. Thompson’s home was built in 1840 and later torn down in 1890. Only a sketch survives of that home in Bridgeport. Edwin Hall, who built the Pink House lived just a mere 200 feet from the Thompson home when he was a child.

The Wellsville Pink House

Edwin Hall, who built the Pink House in Wellsville for his family, was a local druggist that created the pink paint that he formulated at his drugstore in downtown Wellsville.  The drugstore closed in 1974 and is now the Beef Haus restaurant.

The east side of the house was expanded in 1870s to 1880 to accommodate the music room and one side of the living room with bookshelves, a large desk, a stained glass window and grand piano. Plus, a very large side porch was added at this time.

In the 1900s the walkway between the kitchen and the ice house was taken down and replaced with a window and an electric refrigerator was installed.

In the 1950s, a side porch was shortened on the eastside to create a first-floor bedroom and bathroom near the kitchen to accommodate Fannie Carpenter. She later died in 1958. Fannie was the last family member to live at the Pink House full-time.

The caretaker’s wing consists of six rooms and a large bathroom. The grounds include a gazebo, fossil house, carriage house and ice house.

Julian and Marcile Woelfel began renovations on the home in the 1990s. One of their goals was to bring back the Victorian era aesthetic through the use of wallpaper, restoring and reupholstered furniture and converting gas chandeliers to electricity.

Over the 150-years the Pink House has held funerals, weddings, many social events and was used as the main location for the Emmy Award winning short film, “The Birthmark”, based on the Nathaniel Hawthorne short story of the same title.

Buildings of the Estate

The Ice House

The Home

The Pink House was designed in an Italianate villa style around a central block and tower with wing bays added. Construction began in 1866 and completed in 1869.  The exterior is with flush board siding and sawdust installation which was the standard of the time…

The Fossil House

The Fossil House

The Fossil House was constructed in the 1880s. It consists of 960 square feet divided into two rooms. One room service as Edwin’s office and the other room housed over 5500 locally collected Paleozoic fossils…

Carriage House

The Carriage House

The three-story carriage house, lined with chestnut panels, has a 1401 square feet first floor that housed two horses and a Brougham carriage. The carriage had brass and glass lamps with the padded seats that accommodate two drivers and four passengers. The second and third floor were used for storage…

The Ice House

The Ice House

The ice house is 420 square feet. Its first floor features several floor storerooms and a three-hole outhouse for the servants…