Madame Sherri Forest Ruins

The ruins of a 15-room estate built in 1930 by eccentric New York socialite and costume designer Madame Antoinette Sherri.

All that remains of Madame Sherri's castle is a grand stone staircase that ends abruptly in midair, climbing toward a second floor that no longer exists. Visitors who stood on the top step at midnight reportedly felt invisible hands pushing them toward the edge, a legend so popular that crowds of thrill-seekers eventually caused the upper portion to collapse. You can no longer climb the stairs, but the ghost of the woman who built them still draws people into these woods. Antoinette Bramare was born around 1878 in Paris, France. She trained as a seamstress and danced in the trendiest Parisian clubs under the stage name Antoinette DeLilas before immigrating to New York City by 1911. There, she married Andre Sherri, a dancer, and together they opened the Andre-Sherri costume design shop in 1916. Madame Sherri, as she styled herself, made her fortune designing elaborate costumes for Broadway productions, most notably for the Ziegfeld Follies. She became a fixture of the New York theater world, known for her flamboyance, her fur coats, and her insistence on being addressed as 'Madame.' In 1929, grief-stricken after a personal loss, she visited actor friend Jack Henderson in Chesterfield, New Hampshire, and fell instantly in love with the quiet forested hills of the Monadnock region. She purchased 588 acres of farmland and forest on Gulf Road in West Chesterfield and began building her vision: a resort for performers and artists, with small cottages near a pond and a main building she called her castle. Construction on the chateau-style summer house began in 1931. It featured three floors designed specifically for hosting parties. The main floor had a bar framed with the trunks of living trees that pierced the ceiling. The basement was filled with tables draped in red tablecloths. Furs covered the floors, portraits of celebrities lined the walls, and mirrors filled the bathrooms. Madame Sherri presided over her gatherings from a cobra-backed throne she called the Queen's Throne. Her chauffeur-driven Packard became a regular sight on the country roads of Chesterfield, and the townsfolk talked endlessly about the fast crowd of New York friends who descended on the property each summer. The lavish lifestyle was funded primarily by her friend and former protege, Charles LeMaire, a fellow costume designer who later won three Academy Awards. Around 1957, LeMaire stopped sending checks. Madame Sherri was broke almost overnight. In 1959, vandals broke into the castle and destroyed its furnishings. Heartbroken, Sherri vowed never to return. Three years later, in 1962, the house caught fire and burned to the ground, leaving only the elaborate stonework: the Roman arch stairway, fragments of the foundation walls, and the outline of what had been a grand entrance. Madame Sherri died on October 30, 1965, the day after her property was officially sold, a ward of the state at age eighty-four. The Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests eventually acquired the land, renaming it Madame Sherri Forest. Today the 513-acre forest is a popular hiking destination, but it is the ruins that draw the curious. Hikers report the scent of perfume near the stone staircase where none should exist, and on warm summer evenings, some claim to hear faint music and laughter drifting through the trees, as if one of Madame Sherri's legendary parties were still underway somewhere just beyond sight.