National Register Listing

Brooks, Samuel Wallace, House

a.k.a. Big Brothers and Big Sisters Program

623 E. St. Charles St., Brownsville, TX

The Samuel Wallace Brooks House is a rare Rio Grande Valley example of a house. After two moves and a period of decline, the building has recently been sympathetically rehabilitated in an appropriate setting. Its architect and first owner, S. W. Brooks (1829-1903), was an important figure in the history of late 19th-century Brownsville. The building meets National Register Criteria for its architectural significance.

In the later 19th century, Brownsville was one of the few South Texas communities with any standing as a city. The city's strategic location at the southern tip of the state near the mouth of the Rio Grande made it an important trading and shipping center for both Texas and, across the river, Mexico.

One of the more noteworthy Brownsville entrepreneurs of that period was Samuel Wallace Brooks (1829-1903). His career reflects the spirit that brought other ambitious men such as Charles Stillman and Capt. Richard King from the Northeastern United States to remote South Texas to seek their fortunes. As reported in The Twin Cities of the Border (1893).

Mr. Brooks is a Pennsylvanian by birth but lived in Ohio from the time he was 7 years old until he went to New Orleans and began business there in 1853, as an architect, builder, and lumber dealer. He shipped materials for the roof of the Catholic Cathedral in this city, from his lumber yards in 1857, and continued business in New Orleans until 1863. He then came to this section and established himself in Matamoros [Mexico), in the same line of business he had conducted in New Orleans. During a portion of his fifteen years' residence in Matamoros, he had interests in both that city and Brownsville, but the latter place gradually demanded his greater attention; as a consequence, he removed to this side of the river in 1878 and has since that time been a permanent resident of this city.

Brooks was very active in Brownsville and the Rio Grande Valley in the later 19th Century as an architect, builder, and engineer. He is credited with the design or construction of the Fort Brown Hospital (N.H.L. 1964) and jetties, the Episcopal Church of the Advent, the High School Building, the Browne-Wagner House (N.R. 1977), the Kowolski-Dennett House, the Frank Armstrong House, the Federal Building, and the old Cameron County Courthouse, all in Brownsville, as well as county courthouses in Hidalgo (N.R. 1980) and Starr Counties. He held the office of Brownsville City Engineer for eight terms, and held a patent (No. 120,237 - 1871) for "Improvements in Machines of Making Paving Blocks." The latter was for the manufacture of hexagonal pavers, made locally from the wood of ebony trees (Los Ebanos, as they are called locally).

In 1888, when Brooks was likely at the peak of his power and influence in Brownsville, he and his second wife built their home at 1131 East Jefferson Street in Brownsville just southeast of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception (N.R. 1980). Architecturally, it was likely considered a very forward-looking house in Brownsville. Because of the city's remoteness and its strong cultural and geographic ties with Mexico, the typical house of the 1880s there harkened back to Mexican or somewhat out-of-date, sometimes Greek Revival-influenced, American architectural traditions. The Brooks' house, while not large in scale, was a modern house for the time and place, a 1-1/2 story residence in a modified I-plan form. The main block was symmetrical especially noteworthy for its front veranda of ornate sawn fretwork and ornamental bargeboard elements in the end and front gables. The house followed popular American stylistic traditions of the 1880s. belying its location four blocks from the Mexican border. The house was apparently a source of pride locally and an illustration of it was published in The Twin Cities of the Border five years after its construction.

Brooks died in 1903 at age 72. His widow, the former Mrs. Inez Vallejo Falgout of New Orleans, her son and daughter-in-law, Charles (Carlos) and Librada Falgout, and ultimately her granddaughter, Alice Falgout Merkling, continued to occupy the family home. In 1951, Immaculate Conception Church announced its desire to construct a school on the site of Brooks House. As Mrs. Merkling's grandson, Ernest Tijerina remarked, "You can't say no to the church," and the house was moved some five blocks to the northeast to 1313 East Jackson Street, a mixed, more recent residential/commercial neighborhood (Brownsville Herald, 16 July 1986). The rear ell and what appears on the 1930 Sanborn Fire Insurance Company map to be an irregular east-corner addition were demolished at the old site. A small addition was made to the eastern portion of the rear facade at the Jackson Street location and a new front porch was constructed.

By the 1970s, both the house and the neighborhood had fallen on somewhat evil times. In Historic Brownsville (1980), Betty Bay noted, "It is ironic and sentimentally sad that the house which Brownsville's most prominent architect of the late 1800s built for his own home should look as it now does - in such a desperate need of renovation". The front veranda had been altered, unsightly additions made to the rear, and the Brooks House was in a generally deteriorated condition.

In 1987, owner Nidia G. Arisman contracted to have the condemned house demolished and the lot cleared (as it remains today). Members of the City of Brownsville Heritage Council, however, took a keen interest in the house and bought the demolition contract. A sympathetic buyer was found in the Big Brothers and Big Sisters Program, Inc., and the task of moving and rehabilitating the Brooks House began.

An appropriate, vacant lot was acquired a half-mile or so to the west of the Jefferson Street site on St. Charles Street. The new location had never been developed with more than a storage shed, although it was surrounded by some of the most significant surviving late 19th- and early 20th-Century residences in Brownsville. The new site approximates the long-lost original setting of the Brooks House. With the exception of the veranda and rear additions, most historic fabric from the original house survived. Photographic documentation of the front and sides of the structure was used to replicate the veranda and other missing elements. The newel post, long since removed from the house, was returned and the staircase restored. As the historic rear ell had been demolished without documentation, it was decided to treat the rear of the building in a simple, non-historic manner without extensions. The upstairs of the house was adapted for current needs, and the downstairs was restored as possible to its original two-room/ central hall plan. Every effort was made to preserve surviving historic fabric and accurately reconstruct missing elements. Accordingly, the historic integrity of the house has been restored, and the building -- probably the only surviving 19thCentury structure of its style in the city -- is again a source of pride to the people of Brownsville.

Local significance of the building:
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1988.