Memory Lane: Litchfield Manson

Litchfield Manson, also known locally as Mandalay. (WCF Courier)

When I was young, I lived on a street called “Grand Boulevard.” It was an old tree-lined boulevard with beautiful historic house. I liked to imagine it as it must have been in the early part of the 20th century when they were built—carriages rambling down one side of the boulevard or the other arriving at the stately mansions made of stone or brick which were built every 2 acres or so apart from one another. 

At least one was purported to have a ballroom, servants quarters, and both a front and back staircase, though I never got to see this mythical place from the inside. 

As time went on, many of those palatial lots were subdivided to make room for homes built in 1930s, 40s, and 50s. At one time, it was THE area in which to live. 

Thing was, the boulevard part ended the block before mine, so my part of the street was just a bland street of houses built in the 1940s, 50s and a smattering of those built in the 1960s. Cedar Heights, as it was known in the beginning, was eventually incorporated into Cedar Falls, Iowa in 1935. 

Our family lived in a little Cape Cod 2+ bedroom joint with one bath - 1711 Grand Blvd. It all seemed so huge back then, but was only about 900 sq. feet, all told. Rumor had it that my parents got such a good deal on it because someone in the previous owner's family died in the home. I never knew for sure if that was true or not. My sister and I shared the entire upstairs of that house that eventually was covered in blue/green shag carpeting. We used the little gables as our private offices for the occasional game of “school” or “office.” 

The kitchen was much too small to seat our family of four. Off the dining room in the back of the house, French doors led to the fabulous screened verandah where we spent many a sultry summer night protected from being eaten alive by mosquitoes. 

I would catch the scent of the lilac bushes gently wafting around the verandah on those starry evenings long ago. The ample yard was full of fruit—pear, apples of various types, plums, and gooseberries. With great relish we waited every spring for the fruit to ripen so we could stop mid-play for free snacks. Mom would harvest the rhubarb that grew plentifully behind the garage each year and all manner of baking was had for weeks – rhubarb pie, rhubarb cobbler, and other concoctions of rhubarbilicious goodness happily topped with a little bit of Cool Whip. 

Endless minutes of fascination were provided by the ants scurrying across the peonies blooming in yellow, red, pink and white on the west side of the house before we raced off to finish our duel with trash can lid shields and stick swords. 

The trees were the perfect place to hide in hide-n-seek games held at dusk. Big old hickory trees lined the front yard and a long, curved sidewalk led to the front door. There were no fences in our neighborhood. 

Down near the bluffs, about a block away, and also just a block or so off of the boulevard, was a grand old mansion called “Mandalay.” Some rich manufacturing guy named Litchfield built it in 1922. Back then, it cost about $400,000 to build and had 22 rooms including a shooting gallery, gym, single-lane bowling alley, marble & bronze fountain, billiards room, and pipe organ. It had an early automatic dishwasher, a clothes washer and dryer, vacuum cleaning system, concealed radiators and an intercom. Such a thing had never been seen in our little town. The household furnishings and gadgets were purported to have cost an additional $400,000. The carriage house was nearly as big as the house to me—and had at one time been home to the servants working at the mansion. 

In my feverish imagination, I always pictured William Powell and Carole Lombard and a kind of My Man Godfrey kind of family living there. The people who built it lost it in the Depression. Brothers Arthur and J.E. Fergason ended up buying it for back taxes and $9,000 in 1932. 

The mansion was converted into a nightclub and restaurant. Images of an illicit speakeasy danced in my head—one in which the rich and powerful would arrive furtively, headlamps off, in their 1930 Pierce Arrows or Dusenbergs as they pulled around back and gained admittance through a series of secret knocks. 

Then, it became an inn (I pictured Holiday Inn and Bing Crosby as owner), and finally a bunch of dumpy apartments as the luster was long ago lost (more like the one-season show from the 70s, Hot L Baltimore). 

I always remember it for one particular reason. Trees had grown uncontrolled on the grounds of the apartments, which abutted the bluffs and the river below over the scores of years since it was originally built. One day, a construction crew started to clear the land down the road from Mandalay, extending the road and building a modern version of a mansion for a wealthy family on the other end. The crew needed to pile all the dirt they dug up somewhere, so they cleared some of the land adjoining Mandalay to pile the dirt. As the brush was pulled away, it exposed a fabulous stone gazebo, long neglected—16-paned windows glassless, but hinges and wood still intact—but the perfect place for a fort. 

My pal Doug and I knew we had just found our new home. Brooms were brought, the junk pile near the train tracks was foraged through, and in the end, we had a small wobbly table, two broken chairs, a wooden mantel cross, a stained-glass pyramid, and a Playboy magazine. 

We brought odds and ends from the house to cover the table, sturdy the chairs, and each day we’d ride our bikes to our cool place and eat our lunches, looking out down the bluffs to the river and look in satisfaction at our creation. It was a little bit of heaven. One day we arrived, and inexplicably, it just didn’t feel the same—the thrill was gone. 

The new houses were nearly finished on the street and the dirt pile was dissipating and would soon uncover our little hideout. Then, our Playboy was stolen and we knew for sure we wouldn’t be back, and abandoned it forever. 

Sometimes I wish I could go back to the days when I was young and my biggest problem was what kind of dress to put on Barbie or whether or not I had enough Legos to build a fort. 

 ~Anonymous, the 1960s 

Copyright 2007