Virginia Department of Historic Resources Virginia Department of Historic Resources
For additional information, read the Nomination Form PDF
VLR Listing Date 08/15/1989
NRHP Listing Date 11/02/1989
NRHP Reference Number 89001930
The earliest portion of the galleried frame Brooks-Brown House was built in the 1830s and was later expanded with several additions. Its original occupant was Andrew Brooks, a Franklin County farmer who served in the Virginia House of Delegates from 1843 to 1863. The property was later acquired by Brooks’s brother-in-law, William A. Brown, one of the county’s leading tobacco farmers and manufacturers. Brown established a tobacco factory adjacent to the house around 1870. During the last two decades of the 19th century the house also functioned as a stagecoach stop known as the Halfway House, a name assigned because of the property’s location midway between Danville and Roanoke. A detached building on the Brooks-Brown House property served as an office and later as a county polling station; its kitchen/dining room walls preserve rare 19th-century graffiti.
Many properties listed in the registers are private dwellings and are not open to the public, however many are visible from the public right-of-way. Please be respectful of owner privacy.
Abbreviations:
VLR: Virginia Landmarks Register
NPS: National Park Service
NRHP: National Register of Historic Places
NHL: National Historic Landmark
Updated: September 21, 2021
