{"id":565,"slug":"phelps-mansion-museum-binghamton-new-york","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["The Phelps Mansion is the last house standing on Mansion Row. In 1870, Sherman D. Phelps — banker, Binghamton mayor, and Republican elector who cast his vote for Lincoln — commissioned Isaac G. Perry to build the three-story brick-and-stone pile on Court Street; Perry would go on to be chief architect of the New York State Capitol. The neighbors' mansions are all gone; Phelps's is the survivor, a Gilded Age row reduced to one address.","The house's second life was a women's club — the Monday Afternoon Club bought it in 1905 and met in its rooms for a century, preserving the interiors through the sheer fact of continuous use. When the club disbanded in 2006 it gave the mansion and its contents to the museum that now bears the builder's name — one of the country's more seamless transitions from private wealth to public house.","The museum keeps the full Victorian interior — Perry's woodwork, the club's furnishings, the period rooms of a city booster who banked, governed, and voted a president into office. Binghamton's Court Street is a modern downtown now; the mansion is the block's memory of the era when it was a row of palaces and this was the grandest one left.","Phelps Mansion is the archive's Mansion-Row file — Sherman Phelps's 1870 Perry-designed palace, the last survivor of Binghamton's grand street, preserved whole by a century of the Monday Afternoon Club."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["Phelps Mansion is the archive's survivor file — the sole remnant of Binghamton's Mansion Row, built by a Lincoln elector and designed by the future architect of the state capitol, kept intact by a ladies' club for a hundred years.","A row reduced to one house keeps its interiors — the file's suggestion being that the Phelps's hold is continuity: the club that never left, the rooms that never changed, the row that exists now only inside its last mansion's walls."]}],"name":"Phelps Mansion Museum","aliases":[],"type":"MANSION_MUSEUM","type_label":"Mansion Museum","cats":["HAUNTING"],"groups":["hauntings","institutions"],"desc":"Sherman Phelps’s residence, with period-clothed apparition and unwound-clock stories.","full_desc":"Phelps Mansion Museum is a mansion museum in Binghamton, New York. Sherman Phelps’s residence, with period-clothed apparition and unwound-clock stories. Built in 1870 for businessman and Binghamton mayor Sherman D. Phelps. Reported lore and claims include: The trail reports period-clothed apparitions, doors moving and an unwound clock chiming unexpectedly.","address":"191 Court Street","city":"Binghamton","county":"Broome","state":"New York","postal":null,"region":"Northeast","lat":42.101331,"lon":-75.909369,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"HISTORIC_SITE","access":"PUBLIC","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":"https://phelpsmansion.org/","phone":null,"year_built":1870,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":null,"research_notes":"Discovery/enrichment pass; geographic coordinates and current visitor conditions remain to be independently verified. Evidence confidence refers to attribution, not paranormal reality.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":66.9,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.85,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":0.8,"paranormal_claim_provenance":0.8,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0.7,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[{"id":427,"type":"PHANTOM_MUSIC","description":"The trail reports period-clothed apparitions, doors moving and an unwound clock chiming unexpectedly. The site in Binghamton, New York gives the account a documented setting: real place, real history, unresolved reports. The claim rests on experience rather than evidence, and the file says so. The account appears in 'Phelps Mansion Museum'. It's the sort of report that survives precisely because it asks you to listen, not look.","evidence":"REPORTED_EXPERIENCE","evidence_label":"Reported experience","entity":null,"where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.65,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Phelps Mansion Museum","url":"https://hauntedhistorytrail.com/explore/phelps-mansion-museum","publisher":"Haunted History Trail of New York State","type":"TOURISM","authority":3},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]}],"history":[{"description":"Built in 1870 for businessman and Binghamton mayor Sherman D. Phelps. Phelps Mansion Museum's past is on record — the entry belongs to the verified layer beneath whatever lore attaches. It's verified history: the dossier's load-bearing detail. Sources including 'Phelps Mansion Museum' carry the record. It is the kind of fact the rest of the dossier leans on.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Phelps Mansion Museum","url":"https://hauntedhistorytrail.com/explore/phelps-mansion-museum","publisher":"Haunted History Trail of New York State","type":"TOURISM","authority":3}}],"legends":[],"entities":[],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"admission_fee":"Guided adults $12, seniors/students $10; self-guided adults $10, seniors/students $8; age 12 and under free. SNAP participants free through Museums for All.","tour_availability":"Guided tours Friday–Sunday at 11am and 2pm; self-guided/audio tours Thursday–Sunday from 11am, last start 3pm.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-14T10:36:20+00:00","source":{"name":"Tours","url":"https://phelpsmansion.org/tours/","publisher":"Phelps Mansion Museum","type":"MUSEUM","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Phelps Mansion Museum","url":"https://hauntedhistorytrail.com/explore/phelps-mansion-museum","publisher":"Haunted History Trail of New York State","type":"TOURISM","authority":3},{"name":"Tours","url":"https://phelpsmansion.org/tours/","publisher":"Phelps Mansion Museum","type":"MUSEUM","authority":2}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":{"title":"Phelps Mansion","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phelps_Mansion","desc":"Historic house in New York, United States","extract":"The Phelps Mansion, formerly known as  The Monday Afternoon Clubhouse, is a three-story brick and stone mansion located on Court Street in Binghamton, New York. It was built in 1870 as the private home of Sherman D. Phelps. Mr. Phelps was a successful businessman, banker, Republican elector for Abraham Lincoln, and mayor of the City of Binghamton. The building was designed by Isaac G. Perry who later became the chief architect for the New York State Capitol building in Albany, New York.\nThe mansion was purchased in 1905 by the Monday Afternoon Club, a women's civic organization. The club constructed a large ballroom on the back of the mansion in 1905 and continues to hold its weekly meetings","img":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/48/Phelps_Mansion_Museum_3.jpg/960px-Phelps_Mansion_Museum_3.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=api&utm_content=thumbnail","score":88,"lat":42.10083333,"lon":-75.90555556},"counts":{"claims":1,"history":1,"legends":0,"entities":0,"sources":2}}