Eighth in a series on Brandon’s historic buildings
By JAMES PECK
The red brick house at 14 Franklin Street, just a couple houses past the library, doesn’t really stand out as you pass it. However, this was the home to two of the most important builders in Brandon’s historic past.
David Warren
According to one account, the first prominent builder, David Warren, actually built the house back around 1850. Recent further research of the deeds puts the date closer to 1834, when Warren likely built it for a man named Dexter Whitcomb who had bought the lot in 1833 for $100.
David Warren was 43 when the 2 ½-story brick house was built, but he was already Brandon’s preeminent builder. He’d just completed both the Congregational Church overlooking Central Park in 1832 and the Baptist Church overlooking Conant Square in 1833. Warren had started as a carpenter and joiner in Brandon in the 1820s then became a master builder/contractor for both residences and businesses.
If you look closely at the front of the Congregational Church, you will see the small marble diamonds above each window, and he put the same marble diamond above the triangular attic window on 14 Franklin. (See accompanying photo.)
A plaque dedicated to David Warren and his wife, Adeline, is still on a wall of the church sanctuary.
Dexter Whitcomb would live at 14 Franklin only five years, selling “my brick house + shop, barn etc.” for $1,100 in 1838 to Ezra Capron. Interestingly, that deed was witnessed by the famous Thomas Davenport, who had invented the electric motor in Forest Dale only four years before.
David Warren would next buy the house in 1842 and live there until 1853. He had by then started the Brandon Iron & Car Wheel Company, for which he designed and built iron wheels for railroad cars and built the company’s many buildings along both sides of Center Street in 1850 (now gone).
He continued to oversee the erection of many buildings in town as well, including the chapel next to the Congregational Church in 1860 (now Fellowship Hall). In 1861, he was a close supervisor of the building of the Town Hall. According to Warren’s obituary in 1869, “he mastered the science of architecture” and “excelled as a builder of private residences and public edifices.”
Ozro Meacham
In 1863, 31-year-old Ozro Meacham, a young successful Brandon merchant and Civil War veteran, bought the house at 14 Franklin for $1,500 and moved in with his wife, Mary, and four children. The Meachams would live there for 42 years until 1905, prompting many in town to call it the “Ozro Meacham House” for much of the 1900s.
Meacham ran a popular men’s clothing store, first in the Simonds Block on the west side of Center Street and then, after an 1889 fire destroyed that building, in the Smith Block which replaced it.
Ozro and Mary Meacham raised their five children at 14 Franklin, including youngest daughter Sara or “Sadie,” as she was known. Sadie recalled later that “when the style came in to paint the brick houses of Brandon, the Meacham girls wanted ours painted, but Ozro Meacham balked at that and the bricks were never painted.”
Ozro died of a heart attack at 73 in 1904 in his pew at St. Thomas’s Episcopal Church.
Tom Rogers
After Ozro’s death, the house was sold to Thomas and Eva Rogers, Meacham’s son-in-law and daughter. Tom and Eva had been married in the house in January of 1900 and already lived there.
Tom Warren Rogers was 52 when he bought the house for $2,437.50. He was by then a rising star builder and contractor, having completed many buildings not only in Brandon, but throughout the state, including Eaton Hospital in Montpelier, the Waterbury Asylum, the Brattleboro Town Hall, significant renovations to the Brandon Inn and even the renovation of the Brandon Congregational Church and chapel (following in the footsteps of David Warren).
Tom and Eva Rogers would live at 14 Franklin until Tom’s passing in 1923. During that time, Tom Rogers was exceedingly prolific as a builder/contractor/architect. The following is a partial list of the buildings he erected:
In Brandon, many residences, plus Brandon High School (1916), expansion of the dining room at the Brandon Inn (1917), the Bank Block (1918), the Prime Block (1919) and the Prime Movie Theater (1921).
At Middlebury College, Pearson’s Hall (1911), Chemistry Building (1913). Mead Memorial Chapel (1916) and Hepburn Hall (1916).
Throughout the state: renovation of St. Paul’s church in Burlington (1910), Lothrop School in Pittsford (1912), the Industrial School in Vergennes (1913), Vermont Marble Store in Proctor (1914), Ilsley Library in Middlebury (died while under construction in 1923).
Tom Rogers was described as follows: “He was universally recognized as among the leading builders in Vermont, if indeed he was not at the head of the list. The list of large important public buildings which stand as monuments to his genius is a striking one and is believed to be unrivalled by any builder in Vermont.”
Amidst all his work activities, Tom Rogers managed to remodel and enlarge 14 Franklin, adding the piazza (porch) on the left side in 1910, significantly renovating the interior in 1915 and adding the brick garage in 1916.
In 1916, Tom rewarded himself by buying the top-of-the-line Cadillac car with a V8 engine that could go up to 65 miles per house, drove it back from Detroit and parked it in his new garage. Brandon residents often saw him buzzing through town on his way to a work site.
In 1923, Tom Rogers died at age 73 of a heart attack, ironically while tending the lawn by his own gravestone at Pine Hill Cemetery in Brandon. In his will, he left a legacy of $1,000 to the Congregational Church and specified that his house at 14 Franklin would go to the Brandon Free Public Library Association “on condition the library be known as the Rogers-Meacham Free Public Library and be always used for library purposes.” After two other legacies of $1,400, he left the remainder of his property, including the Prime Block on Park Street to the west of the Brandon Inn and the block between the alley and the bank corner, to the library.
Eva Rogers’ will was consistent with her husband’s and the library would have gotten the house except after Tom died, Eva changed her will giving the house to her sister, the aforementioned Sadie Meacham, Ozro’s fifth child.
Meanwhile, Eva continued to live at 14 Franklin, dying there in 1931. It took a while, but her estate and Tom’s were finally settled in 1932. Sadie Meacham got the house. The library got the business blocks and sold them immediately to David Shapiro, who would run his department store there for over 50 years. The proceeds gave a significant boost to the library.
Sadie Meacham and Cardinal House
Sadie Meacham was 63 when she was awarded the house in 1932. She grew up there and had lived at home until her late 20s then became a teacher in Cambridge, Mass. and in Brandon. In 1914, she was trained as a nurse in Manhattan and then enlisted in 1917 and served in WWI in the Army Nurse Corps in New Jersey. After the war, she continued as a private nurse there until her sister’s death.
In 1934, Sadie retired from nursing and opened a bed-and-breakfast at 14 Franklin catering to summer tourists and year-round boarders. She named it Cardinal House for the color of the 100-year-old bricks on the house. She would operate it for almost 20 years until only a of couple years before her death in 1955 at age 86.
In 1957, the house was sold out of Sadie’s estate to Kenneth and Katherine Belden. Ken operated a small-engine and lawnmower repair shop on Center Street then moved it to his garage. In the 1960s, he became head custodian at Otter Valley. After his death in 1968, the house was sold.
In 1986, it was bought by Anna and Michael Golden who owned it 34 years, selling in 2020 to current owner Deborah Liebson.
Today, as it approaches its bicentennial, the old brick house at 14 Franklin Street sits as a reminder of Brandon’s two most prominent builders and of the many buildings in Brandon and the state that they built.
