Brooks Farm

Brooks Farm
Location 3521 Big Beaver Rd., Troy, Michigan
Coordinates 42°33′39″N 83°11′28″W / 42.56083°N 83.19111°W / 42.56083; -83.19111Coordinates: 42°33′39″N 83°11′28″W / 42.56083°N 83.19111°W / 42.56083; -83.19111
Area 3 acres (1.2 ha)
Built 1852 (1852)
NRHP Reference # 72001594[1]
Significant dates
Added to NRHP March 16, 1972
Designated MSHS June 19, 1971[2]

The William Brooks Farm, also known as the Washington Stanley Farm, is a farmsite located at 3521 Big Beaver Road in Troy, Michigan. It was designated a Michigan State Historic Site in 1971[2] and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.[1]

History

Washington Stanley was born in Shaftsbury, Vermont in 1807.[3] There he married a young wife, Lydia, and in 1826 moved with his wife and widowed mother to this site. He built a log cabin and began farming. Washington and Lydia Stanley had six children over the next 15 years, and Lydia died and Stanley remarried. In 1852, Stanley built the two-story fieldstone house that sits on the site. Stanley died in 1873 and the farm passed to his daughter Elizabeth and her husband Frank Ford.[4]

The Fords continued to farm the property, and in 1911 their daughter, Alta Ford Peabody,[4] sold the farm to William Brooks.[3] The Brooks family used it as a dairy until 1960,[2] when they sold most of the property to deveolpers.[3] The Brooks family continued to live in the house until the mid-1970s,[3] when they sold it to the Kresge Foundation.[2] The Foundation continues to use the property as their headquarters, and has connected the original farmhouse and barn with a modern addition in 2006.[5]

Description

The William Brooks Farm consists of a farmhouse and various outbuildings, including a machine shop with a smokehouse, hog barns, dairy barns, a milk house, a silo, and a corn crib.[3] The farmhouse is a well-preserved two-story fieldstone Greek Revival structure built on a rectangular plan with side gables. The windows are six-over-six anes with shutters.[3] The front facade has a single-story, columned porch with Gothic detail, and the date of construction (1852) is carved into a stone block above the east-side window.[2][3] A covered porch is built on the rear.[3]

References

  1. 1 2 National Park Service (2010-07-09). "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 "Stanley, Washington, Farm". Michigan State Housing Development Authority: Historic Sites Online. Retrieved August 10, 2013.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Catherine B. Ellis (June 18, 1971), National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form: Brooks Farm (PDF), Kresge Foundation
  4. 1 2 Troy Historical Society (Troy, Mich.) (2004), Troy: A City from the Corners, Arcadia Publishing, p. 19, ISBN 9780738533155
  5. ↑ "Our Green Headquarters". Kresge Foundation. Retrieved August 27, 2013.

Further reading

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