Rosemary Woodhouse and Guy Woodhouse’s move into The Bramford turns a long-desired apartment into the setting of their growing peril. They choose the old building despite Edward Hutchins’s explicit misgivings, make a home in apartment 7E, and settle into routines that initially seem cheerful and ordinary. Later discoveries—a dead baby once found in the basement and a hidden passage connecting their apartment to the Castevets’—give the move a darker significance: the home they carefully prepared was never as separate or secure as it appeared.

The Choice of The Bramford

Rosemary and Guy had already signed a lease on a five-room apartment in a geometric white house on First Avenue when Mrs. Cortez informed them that a four-room apartment had become available at The Bramford. The old, black, elephantine building was known for its high-ceilinged apartments, fireplaces, and Victorian details. Rosemary and Guy had been on its waiting list since their marriage, although they had finally given up hope of getting an apartment there. When Guy relayed the offer, Rosemary immediately wanted to know whether they could get out of their existing lease. Their desire for The Bramford prevailed over the security of the commitment they had just made elsewhere.

Edward Hutchins tried to change their minds. He wished they would look for a good house rather than The Bramford, reasoning that bad houses attracted publicity while good ones did not. He had broken an evening engagement to warn them, then, when they remained determined, gave up pressing his case. He urged them to use the apartment’s bolt, chain, and peephole and cautioned them against casually introducing themselves to everyone in the building. Rosemary pointed out that the door already had those safeguards. The exchange established both their confidence in ordinary protections and Hutchins’s sense that the building called for unusual caution.

Lease and Move

On the following Monday, Rosemary and Guy signed a two-year lease for apartment 7E. They paid Mrs. Cortez $583, covering a month’s rent in advance and a month’s rent as security. The apartment was expected to be cleared by the end of the week, allowing the painters to come in on Wednesday the eighteenth; the couple could take occupancy before September first if they wished.

They also met Martin Gardenia, the previous tenant’s son, to inspect furnishings he was selling. His prices were attractively low, and they bought two air conditioners, a rosewood vanity with a petit-point bench, the living room’s Persian rug, and the fireplace andirons, firescreen, and tools. The rolltop desk they particularly hoped to acquire was not for sale. While Guy wrote the check and helped mark the pieces that would remain, Rosemary measured the living room and bedroom with a six-foot folding rule. The transaction began the practical work of turning the apartment into their own.

On Friday, August 27, they moved in. Their friends Joan and Dick Jellico sent a large potted plant, and Guy’s agent sent a smaller one. Hutchins sent a telegram predicting that The Bramford would change from a bad house to a good one when one of its doors bore the name R. and G. Woodhouse. The message made the move feel like a hopeful act of renewal, even as it preserved the warning the couple had chosen not to heed.

Making a Home

Rosemary threw herself into furnishing and organizing the apartment. She hung curtains, found a Victorian glass lamp for the living room, and arranged pots and pans on the kitchen wall. She discovered that four boards in the hall closet fitted onto wooden cleats as shelves, covered them with gingham contact paper, and used them to make a linen closet. Everyday provisioning followed: she found a supermarket on Sixth Avenue and a Chinese laundry on Fifty-fifth Street for the sheets and Guy’s shirts.

The work of settling in made the apartment legible as a home through objects, measurements, and repeated tasks. The later discovery that the apparently useful linen closet concealed a passage would reverse that meaning: the space Rosemary had arranged to hold household linens also formed a hidden connection beyond her apartment. Her home-making was real, but the building’s architecture quietly placed a limit on the privacy she believed she had established.

The Warning Reconsidered

The building’s menace first intruded on ordinary routine in the basement. When Rosemary went down every few days to do laundry, the small, unmanned service elevator’s sudden creaks and tremors unsettled her. The basement’s once-whitewashed brick passageways, distant footsteps, unseen doors, and caged bulbs made the route to the laundry room feel oppressive. Rosemary knew that a dead baby wrapped in newspaper had been found there not long before. She considered looking up the story in old newspapers, as Hutchins had done, but decided that knowing more would make the place still more dreadful.

Much later, Rosemary worked out how intruders could have entered the apartment even though its door had been chained. She found that a panel behind the shelves in the linen closet swung inward onto a concealed route leading to a closet in Minnie Castevet and Roman Castevet’s apartment. From there she could see the Castevets’ hallway and bedroom; there was no crib and no baby in view. The hidden opening transformed Hutchins’s early practical warning about locks and strangers into a more profound failure of security: the ordinary front door was not the only way into the home. The move that began with an eagerly awaited lease had brought Rosemary into a building whose concealed history and architecture would undermine her trust in domestic space.