They had been renovating the small Milwaukee bungalow for six months. The bookshelf came off the wall on a Tuesday afternoon in March.
The bungalow on North Maryland Avenue in the East Side neighborhood of Milwaukee had been built in 1924. It had passed through five owners in its hundred and one years of existence. The most recent owners — Theo and Maren Pellam, a couple in their mid-thirties who had purchased it in September of the previous year — had been doing the slow patient renovation that most small Milwaukee East Side bungalow owners do in the first year of ownership. They had refinished the original 1924 wood floors. They had painted the kitchen. They had replaced the 1987 water heater. They had been, on the Tuesday afternoon in March I am writing about, removing a built-in bookshelf from the east wall of the dining room.
The bookshelf had been, by every visible reading of the 1924 construction, an original feature of the house. It had been approximately seven feet tall, four feet wide, and twelve inches deep. It had been built into the east wall in the way that 1924 Milwaukee bungalow built-ins had been built — anchored to the studs, with a trim around the perimeter that matched the original 1924 baseboards.
They had decided to remove it. The Pellam plan for the dining room had been to open up the east wall to create a pass-through into the kitchen. The bookshelf had been in the way of the plan.
Theo Pellam — a Milwaukee structural engineer in his mid-thirties — had spent the Tuesday morning carefully removing the bookshelf shelves. He had removed the trim. He had begun, at approximately one in the afternoon, the work of pulling the bookshelf carcass away from the wall.
The carcass had come away from the east wall at approximately one twenty-two.
Behind the bookshelf, in the section of the east wall that had been hidden by the carcass for what was probably the majority of the 1924 bungalow’s existence, was a door.
II. The door.
The door was approximately five feet tall and twenty inches wide. It was made of tongue-and-groove planks of dark wood, painted over many times in approximately the same cream color as the surrounding plaster of the east wall. The door had a brass doorknob, which had been painted over with the same cream paint as the door itself.
The door had no keyhole. The brass doorknob simply turned.
Theo had stood in front of the door for almost a full minute.
Maren — who had been in the kitchen making lunch — had walked into the dining room.
“Theo,” she had said. “What is — ”
“There is a door.”
“I see that.”
They had stood together in front of the door for almost a full minute.
The east wall of the dining room was, by every reasonable reading of the 1924 bungalow floor plan, an interior wall. The kitchen was on the other side of it. The kitchen contained the cabinetry, the refrigerator, the gas range, the sink. There was, by every reasonable reading of the spatial geometry, no place behind the east wall of the dining room for any door to lead to.
The door, by every reasonable reading, should not have existed.
It did.
III. The opening.
Theo had reached for the doorknob.
Maren had put her hand on his arm.
“Theo,” she had said. “Wait.”
He had stopped.
They had stood for another moment.
“What do you mean wait.”
“I mean wait. Let us think about this. We have been renovating this house for six months. We have not, by every honest reading of the spatial geometry, encountered any indication that there was any additional space inside the walls. The kitchen on the other side of this wall is the kitchen. The door — Theo, the door is not, by any reading I can think of, leading anywhere reasonable. I want to think about whether we open it now or whether we — ”
“Whether we what?”
“Whether we call somebody first.”
He had thought about it. He had been a Milwaukee structural engineer for ten years. He had been, by every honest reading of his own internal disposition, the kind of careful structural engineer who had developed, over those ten years, a respect for the unusual things that old houses sometimes hide.
“Maren,” he had said. “I think — I think we should at least look. Whatever is behind it, it has been behind it since approximately 1924. It is not going to be anything that requires immediate attention. But I want to know what is in there.”
She had thought about it.
“All right,” she had said.
He had turned the brass doorknob.
The door had opened inward.
IV. The space.
Behind the door was a narrow corridor.
The corridor was approximately twenty inches wide. It was approximately five feet tall — matching the door’s frame. It extended, by Theo’s careful initial reading, approximately fifteen feet to the north — toward the front of the house.
The corridor was, by every visible reading, original to the 1924 construction. The walls were the same lath and plaster as the interior walls of the main house. The floor was the same tongue-and-groove pine as the original 1924 floors. The corridor had no electrical wiring. It had no lighting. It had no window.
It was, by every reasonable reading of the 1924 floor plan, the kind of narrow corridor that did not, by any subsequent forty years of Milwaukee bungalow renovation, generally exist.
Theo had retrieved a flashlight from the kitchen. He had stepped, carefully, into the corridor.
He had walked the fifteen feet to the north end.
At the north end of the corridor was a narrow staircase. The staircase descended, by his careful initial reading, approximately six feet to a lower level.
He had stood at the top of the staircase for a long moment.
He had then climbed back to the door, gestured for Maren to follow, and the two of them had descended the staircase together.
V. The room.
The room at the bottom of the staircase was approximately eight feet by ten feet. It had the same lath-and-plaster walls as the corridor and the main house. It had the same tongue-and-groove pine floor. It had, in the center of the east wall, a single coal-fired stove — the kind that 1924 Milwaukee bungalows had originally been built with for winter supplementary heating.
The room also contained, by Theo’s careful initial inventory:
A wooden writing desk along the north wall. The desk was approximately three feet wide. It had a single drawer. On the desk surface was a brass-shaded reading lamp — which, by Theo’s careful subsequent inspection, had no connection to any electrical service.
A wooden chair pushed under the desk.
A small bookshelf along the west wall containing approximately forty books.
A small narrow bed along the south wall, made up with a quilt that appeared to be the kind of 1920s pieced cotton quilt that Milwaukee homes of the period sometimes had.
A small wash basin in the corner with a pitcher of water beside it.
The room had, by every visible reading, been preserved in the state of a room that someone had been living in, in 1924, and that had been sealed off and abandoned at some subsequent point.
The dust on every surface was, by Theo’s careful initial reading, the kind of dust that accumulates over many decades.
VI. The book on the desk.
There was a book on the desk.
The book was open. It was facedown, as though the reader had set it down to mark a page and had intended to return to it. The spine of the book read, in gold lettering: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes — Arthur Conan Doyle.
The edition was, by Maren’s careful subsequent inspection in the following days, a 1905 American printing — the kind that early-twentieth-century American households would have had on their bookshelves.
Beside the book on the desk was a folded piece of paper.
Theo had picked it up carefully.
The piece of paper was a single sheet of onion-skin typing paper, approximately eight by ten inches. It had been folded in half. The folded paper had been weighed down by the brass reading lamp on the desk.
He had unfolded it.
The piece of paper contained, in blue-ink handwriting that had been small carefully preserved by the sealed conditions of the underground room:
December 1924.
To whoever finds this room.
My name is Caroline Whitcombe-Pearson. I am twenty-six. I have been living in this room for the past eleven months. I have been, by every honest reading of my own situation, in hiding.
The main house above me belongs to my cousin Margaret and her husband Henry Pearson. They are, by every honest reading of their kindness, hiding me. I am hiding from a man named James Donovan, who I was briefly married to between 1922 and 1923 and who, by every honest reading of the subsequent year, will not accept that the marriage is over. He has followed me from Chicago to Milwaukee. He has, by every honest reading of the kind subsequent reporting of my Milwaukee acquaintances, been actively searching for me.
The room is my safety. The door above is hidden, by my cousin’s careful arrangement, behind a built-in bookshelf in the dining room. The bookshelf is on hinges. It swings out, by the release of a catch at the base of the third shelf. The catch is small, but it is there.
I am writing this letter because I have, by my own honest internal accounting over the past several days, begun to believe that the arrangement may not, in the subsequent years, last forever. The Pearsons are good people. But they are also, by every honest reading, careful people who have children and who have careful lives of their own. The arrangement is a kindness. It cannot, by every honest reading of the nature of kindnesses, continue indefinitely.
If I am gone — if I have, by careful subsequent careful arrangement, been moved to a safer place; or if I have, by less careful subsequent arrangement, been found by James Donovan — please understand that I lived here for as long as I needed to, and that I was kept safe in this room by the kindness of two Milwaukee cousins who did not, by any subsequent description of the arrangement, ever tell anyone what they had been doing.
Please leave the room as you find it. Please do not, by any subsequent disturbance, change the evidence that this kindness existed.
With my gratitude to whoever finds this, Caroline Whitcombe-Pearson · December 1924.
VII. The research.
I sat with Theo and Maren Pellam in the dining room of the house on North Maryland Avenue on a Saturday afternoon in early May, almost two months after the Tuesday afternoon Theo had removed the bookshelf. The bookshelf had been, by gentle joint decision in late March, carefully reinstalled in its original position. The Pellam renovation plan for the dining room had been, by gentle joint decision in the subsequent two weeks, revised. The built-in bookshelf would remain. The pass-through to the kitchen would not be created.
The underground room would remain sealed.
They had done, in the intervening weeks, a amount of careful historical research.
Caroline Whitcombe-Pearson had been a real person. She had been born in Chicago in 1898. She had married a man named James Donovan in 1922. She had, by every available reading of the Cook County records of the period, divorced him in early 1923. She had then, by every available reading of the Wisconsin records, disappeared from the public record in approximately April of 1923.
She had reappeared in the public record in May of 1926 in Madison, where she had married a University of Wisconsin English professor named Edward Pearson and had lived, by every available reading, a long and quiet life as a Madison faculty wife. She had passed in 1973 at the age of seventy-five.
Edward Pearson had been the brother of Henry Pearson — the Henry Pearson named in the December 1924 letter. The Pearsons had been, by every available reading of the family genealogy that Maren had carefully reconstructed in April, the Milwaukee cousins who had hidden Caroline.
James Donovan had, by every available reading of the Chicago records, been arrested in 1927 on unrelated charges and had been incarcerated for the subsequent eleven years. He had, by every available reading, never located Caroline.
The arrangement had, by every honest reading of the surviving records, worked.
VIII. Why it stays.
I sat with Theo and Maren on the Saturday afternoon in early May. The bookshelf was, by gentle joint decision, in its original position on the east wall of the dining room. The catch at the base of the third shelf — which Maren had located, by careful patient inspection in late March, exactly where the December 1924 letter had described it — had been, by gentle joint decision, returned to its original engaged position.
The door behind the bookshelf was, this May, closed. The underground room behind the door was, this May, in the state Caroline Whitcombe-Pearson had left it in.
The December 1924 letter has been, by gentle joint decision in early April, photographed and digitally preserved. The original letter has been returned, by gentle joint placement, to the desk in the underground room. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes has been returned to its facedown position. The brass reading lamp has been returned to its original placement weighing down the letter.
The room is, by gentle joint description, exactly as Caroline left it.
I asked Maren, near the end of our conversation, what she thought about the Pellam decision not to disturb the room.
She thought about it for a moment.
“Sweetheart,” she said. “The December 1924 letter asked us, by its direct text, to leave the room as we found it. The letter was written by a twenty-six-year-old woman who had been in hiding for eleven months from a violent ex-husband. She had not, in the one hundred and one years between her writing of the letter and our finding of it, asked anything else of any subsequent person who lived in this house. She had asked only that the evidence of the kindness that had kept her safe be preserved.”
She paused.
“We can preserve it,” she said.
Some underground rooms are not, in the end, asking to be excavated. They are asking to be left in the kind preserved shape in which a 1924 act of cousin-to-cousin Milwaukee kindness chose to leave them.
Across the United States, in 1924 Milwaukee bungalows and built-in bookshelves on east walls of dining rooms and hidden underground rooms that contain the evidence of Prohibition-era acts of careful small family kindness, the old American work of private domestic shelter is still slowly waiting to be carefully not disturbed by the subsequent renovating owners of century-old houses. For broader context on the long American history of early-twentieth-century domestic-violence shelter and the informal networks that American women relied on, readers can spend time with the materials at the Library of Congress or the long-form material at the Smithsonian Magazine. If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is available twenty-four hours a day at 1-800-799-7233. The Chapbook keeps its narratives clean, human, and responsible — read more in the Editorial Policy.
The Pellam renovation has, by gentle joint decision, continued. The built-in bookshelf will stay. The pass-through to the kitchen will not be created. The underground room will remain sealed.
The house on North Maryland Avenue is, this May, almost exactly what it had been on the Tuesday morning in March before Theo Pellam had removed the bookshelf.
It will, by gentle joint decision, stay that way.
