Living History: Lafayette House has Occupied Foxborough Since 1784

Ron Young has owned the Lafayette House in Foxborough more than 20 years, but the building itself has been around for a lot longer.

Young said the house has been around for 229 years. It was originally the Bristol County Courthouse and stagecoach house called the Everett Inn, even though the property is not in Bristol County.

“At some point, the court left,” he said. “This building is not in Bristol County … the building was located here primarily because it’s halfway between Boston and Providence – what a horse does in one day is 20 miles and it’s 20 miles to Providence from Boston. That’s why it was built here. It was once called the halfway house, the white house ... this road out front [Route 1] was the main road.”

Young said he is an immigrant from Scotland who moved to Sandusky, Ohio in 1959 when he was a child.

“We came over and tried to live the American Dream,” he said. “We lived in Ohio most of our lives. Then in 1984, I bought a restaurant at Faneuil Hall market called Peabody’s.”

Young said that he also owned an ice cream shop called Steve’s Ice Cream at Faneuil Hall in Boston.

“In the early 90s, I decided I wanted to be in a restaurant where I was the landlord,” he said. “I sold those restaurants to the employees and bought the Lafayette House.”

Young said the house was the location where George Washington and General The Marquis de La Fayette stayed when they were on their way to set the cornerstone to the Bunker Hill Monument.

Young said the house itself has seen a reduction over the years. Originally, the stable for the inn was where America’s Best Value Inn (or the End Zone as Young still calls it) is located. That stable was moved from the property down the road to North Street.

But some connection between the two properties remain.

“[America’s Best Value Inn] has a stone wall that matches our stone wall,” he said.

Young said there were many heirlooms and artifacts in the building when he came to the house. Two things in particular struck him as odd.

He found a letter from 1959, the year his family came to the U.S., asking for reimbursement for a dry-cleaning bill due to a ketchup spill.

“It was dated the year I came to the U.S., it was the company dry-cleaner from the town my dad worked in and it was the exact same name as my father,” he said.

He said he also found a painting from before the 1850s of Faneuil Hall.

“The perspective that the artist took was right where my ice cream store was,” he said. “I don’t know if it was fate but it was pretty coincidental.”

With those coincidences in mind, Young opened the a fine dining restaurant that serves continental cuisine. It serves lunch and dinner and has accommodations for private parties and weddings. The atmosphere is elegant and inviting, according to its listing on Foxborough Patch.

Lafayette House is open Monday through Thursday and Sunday, 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m.