The Edward Brooke II Mansion (1887–88), also known as "Brookeholm," is a Queen Anne country house at 301 Washington Street in Birdsboro, Pennsylvania.George E. Thomas, et al., Frank Furness: The Complete Works, (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, revised 1996), pp. 284–86. Designed by architect Frank Furness and completed in 1888, it was Edward Brooke II's wedding present to his bride, Anne Louise Clingan.Janet W. Foster, "Edward Brooke House, Birdsboro, Pennsylvania," The Queen Anne House: America's Victorian Vernacular, (New York: Abrams, 2006, pp. 56–65).

Five years later, Edward II himself designed a major addition to the mansion.George M. Meiser and Gloria Jean Meiser, "The Birdsboro Mansion of Edward and Anne Brooke," The Passing Scene, Volume 13, (Reading, PA: Historical Society of Berks County, 2005), pp. 224–39. Following their parents' deaths, the Brooke children sold the property in the 1940s. The mansion served as a nursing home for thirty years, and recently as a bed and breakfast.

The property spent fourteen years on and off the real estate market, before being sold at auction on September 29, 2018, for $572,000.Tony Phyrillas, "Brooke Mansion sold for $572,000," The Mercury, September 30, 2018.

Brooke family Birdsboro was named for ironmaker William Bird, who established a forge near the mouth of Hay Creek, about 1740.Birdsboro Steel Foundry and Machine Company employee records, from University of Pennsylvania Archives. In 1771, his son Marcus founded Hopewell Furnace about five miles upstream on Hay Creek. By the time of the Revolutionary War, Marcus Bird was the largest American producer of iron. He cast iron cannon, shot and shell for the Continental Army, and served in the Pennsylvania Militia.Hopewell Furnace in the American Revolution, from National Park Service. In the post-war depression he lost both forges to creditors in 1788. The creditors hired John Louis Barde to operate the forges, and Barde purchased the Birdsboro forge in 1796. He hired Matthew Brooke III to assist him, and after Barde's 1799 death Matthew continued to operate the forges for Barde's widow. In 1800, Matthew's father and uncles formed Brooke & Buckley and bought the Hopewell forge, with Matthew's brother Clement in charge. In 1805, at age 43, Matthew married Barde's 17-year-old daughter Elizabeth.George Norbury Mackenzie, Colonial Families of the United States of America, Volume 6, (Baltimore: The Seaforth Press, 1917), p. 102.

Matthew and Elizabeth Brooke had five children: Anne Farmar (died young); Sarah Reese (died young); Edward (1816–1878); George (1818–1912); and Elizabeth Mary (1825–1870).Charles Farmar Billopp, A History of Thomas and Anne Farmar, and Some of their Descendants in America (New York: The Grafton Press, 1907), p. 84. Matthew died in 1827 and Elizabeth in 1828, leaving their three orphaned children under the guardianship of Matthew's brother Clement. The Birdsboro forge was leased out to Brooke & Buckley until Edward and George attained their majorities. The Schuylkill Canal (completed 1825) passed through Birdsboro and, prior to railroads, was the primary means of transporting anthracite coal to Philadelphia and elsewhere. The young brothers took charge of the business in 1837, and diversified its holdings. They modernized the furnaces to run on anthracite (instead of charcoal), expanded their businesses, and consolidated them in 1867 as the Birdsboro Iron Forge Company. The Reading Railroad and the Pennsylvania Railroad both built lines through Birdsboro. The Brookes were behind the building of the Wilmington & Northern Railroad, that connected to their iron ore mines in southern Berks County. This later became a subsidiary of the Reading Company, which extended it south to Wilmington, Delaware.Morton L. Montgomery, History of Berks County in Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: Everts, Peck & Richards, 1886), p. 895. Edward served as the W & N's first president. Following Elizabeth Mary Brooke's 1870 death, the brothers bought out the interests of their late sister, and split their company into two entities – the E. & G. Brooke Land Company (coal and iron ore mines) and the E. & G. Brooke Iron Company (iron and steel manufacture). The E. & G. Brooke Iron Company became Birdsboro Steel in 1905.G. Clymer Brooke, Birdsboro: Company with a Past, Built to Last, (New York: Newcomen Society in North America, 1959).

Both Brooke brothers were keenly interested in architecture, and were clients of Frank Furness. Edward built a Greek Revival mansion, "Brooke Manor" (1844, demolished 1968) on a hill overlooking the town. In the mid-1870s, he hired Furness to modernize and expand it.Brooke Manor House, from HABS. George designed and oversaw construction of St. Michael's Episcopal Church, in the early 1850s. Twenty years later, he did the same for its Sunday school building (1872–73), which he and his brother donated. George designed his own Second Empire mansion, "Brookewood" (1860, burned 1917), and its many additions. After Edward's 1878 death, George selected Furness to design a major expansion of St. Michael's Church, 1884–85. This included the addition of transepts, a chancel and choir, a bell tower, and new church furniture (possibly executed by Daniel Pabst). George again oversaw the project, and he and his family paid for the expansion. The east transept was altered in 1887 for the installation of a Tiffany window,Edward Brooke Memorial Window, from Alarmy. a memorial to Edward from his widow, Annie Moore Clymer Brooke.

Edward Brooke II

George Brooke married Mary Baldwin Irwin in 1862. They had two sons, Edward II, named for George's brother; and George Jr. The boys grew up in Philadelphia and Birdsboro, and were educated by private tutors. The family had a Philadelphia city house at 924 Walnut Street, and the sons attended the nearby Delancey School. Edward II graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1886, and joined his father's iron and steel business.

In an October 12, 1887, wedding at St. Michael's Church, Edward II married his second cousin, Anne Louise Clingan. The groom gave the bride the not-quite-finished house as a wedding present:He is now engaged in building a magnificent mansion at a high elevation overlooking Birdsboro and the entire Schuylkill valley. He and his bride left on an extensive wedding tour to New York and the New England states. Upon their return they will reside with his father until their residence is completed, which will be some time in November."Brooke–Clingan; Largely Attended Wedding Near Birdsboro." The Reading Eagle, October 12, 1887, p. 1. Edward and Anne Louise Brooke had four children: George Brooke III (1888–1967), Berks County politician, aide to PA Gov. Gifford Pinchot, author of With the First City Troop on the Mexican Border (1917),With the First City Troop on the Mexican Border, from New York Public Library. WWI veteran, married Virginia D. Muhlenberg Steininger, 1942, no children. Edward Brooke Jr. (1890–1976), secretary/treasurer of E. & G. Brooke Iron & Steel Company, married (1st) Helen F. Rieser, 1932, divorced 1938, (2nd) Mary E. Andrews, no children."Edward Brooke, Jr.," The Daytona Beach Morning Journal, April 20, 1976, p. 3A. Charles Clingham Brooke (1892–1975), lab chemist for E. & G. Brooke Iron & Steel Company, WWI veteran, married, divorced and remarried same woman, no children."Charles C. Brooke," The Daytona Beach Morning Journal, December 10, 1975, p. 9B. Mary Baldwin Irwin Brooke (1897–1957), married Edward Lowber Stokes, 1920, 2 children.

Edward II succeeded his father as president of the E. & G. Brooke Iron Company and the Birdsboro Steel Foundry and Machine Company."Edward Brooke Sr. Dies From Burns," The Reading Eagle, November 21, 1940, p. 1. He served as president of the Pennsylvania Trust Company of Reading and the First National Bank of Birdsboro, and as a director of the Wilmington & Northern Railroad.

Furness About the time of Edward Brooke II's 1886 graduation, the University of Pennsylvania was contemplating building a fireproof library in which it could gather its collections in a single building. Frank Furness's brother Horace was chosen to head the building committee, and the architect began drawing up detailed plans even before the project was officially announced. The committee hired Furness to advise them, and later chose him to be the library's architect.

Furness's earliest known drawing (1887) shows a plan and a massing of volumes close to the library as built—a stair tower separating vertical circulation from the reading room and stacks; a building featuring an apsidal north end with an arc of seminar rooms clustered around the base of the apse (like side chapels of a basilica).George E. Thomas, Frank Furness: Architecture in the Age of the Great Machines, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018). When the university changed the library's proposed site from 36th & Spruce Streets to 34th & Locust Streets, Furness essentially redrew the plan as a mirror image.

Furness used a similar plan and massing for his own country house, "Idlewild," with a U-shaped wrap-around porch taking the place of the arc of seminar rooms. As noted by architectural historian James F. O'Gorman: "For his own house in Media, [Furness] shrank the plan of the contemporary University Library, and erected over it a stone, brick, and shingle house."James F. O'Gorman, The Architecture of Frank Furness, (Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1973), p. 64.

Furness used a similar plan and massing for the eastern half of Edward Brooke II's house, although the addition of a conical roof turned its apse into a tower.East façade, from brookemansion.com

Exterior

Furness designed the front (north) façade of Brooke's house with two projecting bays—an eastern semicircular apse/tower with a J-shaped wrap-around porch, and a western two-and-a-half-story gabled bay. The exterior's whole first story was faced in brownstone block, and its upper stories were clad in wood shingles. The porch's roof was carried on pyramidical brownstone-block piers with "eared" corbels. The formal entrance was between the projecting bays (from the porch) through a pair of doors with intricately patterned inset leaded-glass windows, sidelights and a semi-oval fanlight. The carriage entrance was on the porch's east side, and featured a porte-cochère and steps leading to a side door with an inset beveled-glass window guarded by an intricate wrought iron grille.Porch and side door, from oldhouses.com Toward the south end, twin sets of French doors opened onto the porch.

The house's eastern half featured a shingled Mansard roof with shed-roofed dormers on three sides, two of them enclosing four windows each. The tower featured twin paired windows on the second and third stories, the upper ones enclosed by conical-roofed dormers. The tower's conical roof and the conical-roofed dormers were crowned by (copper?) finials (now weathered to verdigris). Between the projecting bays, the second story was clad in brownstone block, with a large lunette window over the front doors. The house's original western (now center) projecting bay featured large twin windows on the first story, and paired windows on the second and third stories. Its shingled front and sides curved outward in a skirt, and were carried on paired brownstone corbels. As a decorative element, the shingles under its gable were cut to form concentric arcs. The house featured Furness's characteristic "upside-down" brick chimneys, that flared outward near the top.Ellen Zeiper, "Frank Furness: An Eclectic Architect's Chimney Designs," American Art & Antiques, vol. 1, no. 3 (November–December 1978), pp. 62–69.

Through massing, architectural elements and variated windows, Furness expressed the house's interior spaces on its exterior.

Interior