People ask me all kinds of questions during tours of the Taborian Hall, but my favorite is always some version of, "what's the craziest thing you've found in this place?" So here's one for you.

When we replaced Dreamland's roof back in 1992, the crew found something nobody was expecting: a second roof, tucked underneath the north end of the ballroom, belonging to a completely different building.

Turns out, when the Knights and Daughters of Tabor built Taborian Temple in 1916-1918, there was already a three-story house standing at 818 State Street, right where the north end of our building sits now. Rather than tear it down, the builders just absorbed it. Walled it in, built around it, and kept going. No record of it exists in any newspaper or ledger we've found. The only proof is the building itself.

We know a little about who lived there. In the 1890s it was a boarding house run by a contractor named Thomas Hilton. By the turn of the century, Frank and Clara Wise, a laborer and his wife, called it home. By 1917, right as Taborian was going up, the address just disappears from the city directory.

Gordon Wittenberg, whose father did the building's USO renovation in World War II, came back decades later and confirmed it himself. He figures it came down to money. Cheaper to build around a house than tear it down and start from scratch.

So next time you're sitting under our roof, remember there's another one under it too. A whole house, still standing, still holding up part of this place, and nobody in 1918 ever mentioned it happened.