The Pillars (1850)

Built around 1850 by the Seymour family, the house on Chapman Street in Newington known as “The Pillars” combines Italianate and Greek Revival features. The house is distinguished by its strikingly large entrance portico with Tuscan columns. Substantial restorations to the building were completed in 1986 following damage from a fire. In 1901, Amy and James Archer were hired to look after the house’s resident, an elderly widower named John Seymour. After Seymour died in 1904, his heirs turned the building into a boarding house for the elderly, with the Archers staying on to provide care for the residents. The house was known as “Sister Amy’s Nursing Home for the Elderly.” In 1907, the heirs sold the house and the Archers moved to Windsor, where they established the Archer Home for the Elderly and Infirm. Between 1907 and 1917, there were 60 suspicious deaths in the Archer Home, as well as the deaths of Amy Archer’s first husband James and her second husband Michael Gilligan. Amy Archer-Gilligan, who had purchased large amounts of arsenic, was eventually found guilty of murder in a famous case which inspired the play and film, Arsenic and Old Lace. The Seymour House in Newington was later owned by Philip Brown, who ran the Newington Junction Post Office until 1944. Today the house is subdivided into apartments.