Brooks House – The One and Only

In additional to its historical Importance and preservation, one of the prime movers behind the redevelopment and renovation of the Brooks House is the economics of Brattleboro’s daily life. Historically, Brooks House was, and remains, the largest commercial structure in Brattleboro.

In the midst of The One and Only the Brooks House continues to be an important visual symbol of what makes Brattleboro so unique. Of all of Southern Vermont’s noteworthy landmarks none capture the quintessential past and renewed hopes for the future as this Main Street frontage in the center of downtown Brattleboro.

Built in the “provincial Second Empire” baroque French style in 1871 after an 1869 fire that razed the south side of Main Street, the location became an important transportation center as a “stagecoach and rail hostelry.” Its original, since removed, elaborate 90 foot cast-iron veranda overlooking Main Street was a popular viewing stand for parades or served simply as a way to watch the street activities on the sidewalk below.

Its distinctive characteristic Mansard sloping roof is “shingled in diamond-pattern gray slate“with dormer windows. Featuring an idiosyncratic dormered four-sided intersection tower at the corner of Main and High Streets, Brooks House retains a visage of the past for the structure. The five story towering aristocratic landmark building is Brattleboro’s symbolically conspicuous motif seen in town and from afar.

The exterior wall is constructed with 16 inch dark red brick kilned locally and noted for their strength that is built upon a foundation of “ashlars monoliths of granite,” all of which contributes to the building’s durable longevity.

George Brooks, who made his fortune during the gold rush as a dry goods wholesaler, returned to his native Brattleboro as a philanthropist to build public projects. From the start, Brooks was determined to make Brooks House equal to the best hotels in New England. The civic-minded Brooks also endowed the public Brooks Library as a gift to the town.

Slated for demolition in 1970, an equally civic-minded prominent Brattleboro resident, Norman Chase, worked with the architectural preservation movement to save the structure as an indelible part of the heart of the nineteenth century downtown area.

In the spring of 2011 the building was heavily damaged by fire. Brooks House owner, Jonathan Chase, invested to restore and develop the site, which was described by town manager Barbara Sontag as “vitally important to downtown” Brattleboro.

As this summer of 2014 comes to close, five local investors with Mesabi LLC, who bought the property from Mr. Chase, have once again preserved this marvelous building for posterity.

Go to http://brookshouse.com/ to see why, out the ashes, Brooks House was once again saved to restore it “to its former grandeur and to greatly enhance its place in the community.”