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A Gilded Age Bedroom That Still Smells Like 1893

The Players social club has a secret nook: where Edwin Booth, the actor and brother of Lincoln’s assassin, lived until his death.

Booth’s slippers are still by the bed. He used to rest on the reclining couch (opposite) during the day. It was a popular piece of 19th-century furniture. Photo: Claire Esparros
Booth’s slippers are still by the bed. He used to rest on the reclining couch (opposite) during the day. It was a popular piece of 19th-century furniture. Photo: Claire Esparros

The famed stage actor Edwin Booth had two conditions when he deeded his Gothic Revival mansion in Gramercy Park to the Players in 1888: that it must always remain a social club for those in the arts and that he would continue to live out his days there. The deal held up, and Booth passed away in his bedroom. The Booth Room, and its artifacts, have remained unbothered ever since. There is a photograph of his brother, John Wilkes Booth, whom he never mentioned again after Lincoln’s assassination, nor would he allow anyone else to in his presence. Beneath it hangs a picture of Edwin’s second wife, Mary McVicker. During their marriage, she became mentally ill and he cared for her for 12 years. The box at the foot of the reclining couch was his traveling makeup case. The smell doesn’t appear to have changed, either: The air is still and thick with the scent of tobacco from Booth’s pipes still found around the room.

The living room opposite Booth’s sleeping area includes furniture he brought with him from his Boston house. The book at the head of the table on the left is open to the page that Booth was reading when he suffered his first of two strokes. The large portrait above the book-filled cabinet on the right is of Mary Devlin Booth, Booth’s first wife. Photo: Claire Esparros
The desk is from Booth’s home on Chestnut Street in Boston. The rubbing above the bust of Shakespeare is from Shakespeare’s tomb and was given to Booth by prominent 19th-century Shakespeare scholar Howard Furness. Photo: Claire Esparros
Booth’s dictionary is on a stand in his bedroom. Photo: Claire Esparros
A Gilded Age Bedroom That Still Smells Like 1893