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| By Dan Cooper Staff Intern SPRINGFIELD - "The doors the Monarch Lofts have are probably from a Victorian-style house from Mulberry Street that was torn down, but they are not the actual doors from Dr. Seuss's house," Joseph Carvalho III, President of the Springfield Museums, told Reminder Publications. Carvalho was speaking in response to a story that appeared in last week's Reminder that indicated the doors from Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel's demolished home would be the center of an art gallery in a new eco-friendly project long the Merrimack River in Lawrence. "Dr. Seuss never actually lived on Mulberry Street, he just wrote about it," Carvalho said. "He actually lived on Fairfield Street near Forest Park, a house that is still standing." Carvalho said the Monarch might have thought it was the Seuss doors based on a story from the Associated Press (AP). "The AP ran a story that a house that was destroyed on Mulberry Street was Giesel's home," he said. "He just crossed Mulberry Street on his way to school as a child, which led to the eventual writing of 'And To Think I Saw It On Mulberry Street.'" Frances Gagnon, former chair of the Historical Commission, said that the story the AP ran about the demolition of Geisel's house was incorrect. "There has been a lot of misconceptions about Dr. Seuss since he first published the Mulberry Street book, but it is an entirely fictional piece of work," she said. Gagnon, like Carvalho, said that Geisel never lived on Mulberry Street. Gagnon said there was an unapproved demolition of a house on Mulberry Street, but Geisel's house that he grew up in is still standing and intact. "He was born on Howard Street, and that property was demolished around 1907 or 1908," Gagnon said. "The house he lived in on 74 Fairfield Street, however, is still intact. Windows and doors are still found on the house and it is a historical landmark. It has not been torn down." Gagnon said that Geisel's grandfather's house is also still standing on Sumner Avenue. "Like the house on Fairfield, that house is still in one piece, with no windows or doors missing," she said. "There always seems to be a lot of mythology revolving around Dr. Seuss," Gagnon said. "The house that was destroyed was just a smaller and older house from the 1800's. The old doors are just from a house that used to be." |