Third in a series on Brandon’s historic buildings
By JAMES PECK
“The design and ornamentation of this elaborate house is highly individual and ranks among the most unusual examples of High Victorian eclectic architecture in the state.”
That’s how the so-called “Bird Cage” house was described in 1976, when the Brandon Village Historic District was officially added to the National Historic Register (NHR).
The description went on: “The use of contrasting textures is derived from the Queen Anne while the curved, boldly-formed shapes of the overall conception make the house a late example of the High Victorian Mansard period. Known locally as the “Bird Cage” because of its elaborate decoration, the house has a projecting front tower, with entrances on each side, square main block with concave Mansard roof, and long rear ell.”
This beautiful mansion was originally located at 39 Conant Square but, believe it or not, it was moved over Seminary Hill in 1982 to its current location at 224 Wheeler Road.
Built in the French Second Empire style in 1892-3 by a mason named Roscoe Sanders, the house was first owned by a well-off dentist named Oscar Morehouse who lived there and used one side as his dental office. Dr. Morehouse specialized in artificial teeth. He sold the Bird Cage in 1900 for only $2,600.
Over the next 78 years, the house was owned by ten different families, the longest for 18 years and the average for seven. None of them were very rich, with occupations ranging from carpenter to harness maker to handyman to engineer. Three owners bought it just to flip it for a profit. Some used it as a boarding house.
Why it was sold so often was likely due to its eccentric look and the unusual layout of the rooms. It was bit out of place in Conant Square, in the midst of statelier mansions built by the Conants. The closest thing to it was the tower at 28 Conant Square across the street in the same Mansard style (see previous article on the Thayer Mansion in the September 25th Reporter). The Bird Cage builder, Roscoe Sanders, likely copied that tower and then elaborated on the style.
The longest owners in that 78-year period were Burt and Mabel Cook, he the handyman and she the boarding house operator at the Bird Cage. They bought it for $4,200 in 1945 and lived there until 1963.
On the 1950 Census, the Cooks were recorded at the house at 39 Conant Square, both in their late 60s. Burt was listed as a “handyman” and they had four lodgers, three working for the Ayrshire Breeders. Burt Cook raised Rock Cross chickens in the barn out back and he and Mabel celebrated both their 50th and 60th wedding anniversaries in the Bird Cage.
In 1970, Donald and Audrey Grout bought the property and moved their family of four children in. Don Grout was an electrical engineer for General Electric, then a math and AV teacher at West Rutland High. Daughter Linda Grout Cleveland has great memories of their seven years in the Bird Cage. “It was quite a show house that attracted a lot of attention. My sister and I would be outside playing and people would take pictures and we would try to hide,” she said.
Unfortunately, the Grouts ran into financial problems and the bank took the house in 1978. The bank then sold it in 1979 for a mere $13,000 to Mary Ellen Corbett and Lewis Little, two successful newspaper journalists who had been married five years. Both had been nominated for Pulitzers, Corbett three times for her writing and Little once for his discovery and promotion of award-winning cartoons including “Garfield.”
Renovation and Moving the Bird Cage
Corbett and Little fell in love with the house. Mary Ellen said, “Houses mean a great deal to us. Ownership of an old house is a cultural trust.”
They set about completing a $50,000 restoration of the house with advice from the state Historic Preservation Division and using local contractors, such as talented woodworker Paul Ashley, who restored the gingerbread lattice and much of the inside, even building a birdhouse replica of the house. The original stained-glass windows were reinstalled and the house repainted.
In 1982, they bought a 40-acre lot off Wheeler Road and decided to move the Bird Cage and its carriage house there due to damage to the foundation from heavy truck traffic at Conant Square.
Mary Ellen outlined how the move was accomplished: “There were permits to get, permissions needed to cross private properties, and endless coordination between power, phone, and cable companies and house movers. Preparing a foundation at the new site took about three months. Actually, digging out the old foundation, putting the antique house on a trestle, and getting the trestle on wheels took another half a month.”
“The actual move was accomplished in the course of a few hours when house mover Emile Desautels of Salisbury, Vt., and his crew rolled the 10-room slate-roofed frame house down the road to its new locale. The crew also brought along the couple’s matching carriage barn, to be added on as living space at the new location.”
The move took place 42 years ago on a crisp fall day on October 27, 1982. From the Rutland Herald: “Elementary school children and hundreds of area citizens turned out to watch the long-awaited event. The moving of the ‘Bird Cage’ had been the talk of the town for many days.”
“On reaching the intersection near the town office, the house and barn were towed up Seminary Hill Road and on to a prepared site off the Wheeler Road.”
According to Tom and Carolyn Whittaker, local realtors who graciously provided the accompanying photos of the move, as the house started up Seminary Hill by the Town Hall, it started to slide back, but a backhoe was hitched onto the truck to get it up that steepest part. When they reached the field at the top of the hill off Highland Avenue, they needed to dump gravel under the wheels several times when they got stuck in the mud.
The Bird Cage made it to its new home in about two hours and was put on its new foundation, as was the carriage house. Corbett and Little would own it for the next 12 years before again letting the bank take it.
This time it was sold along with the now 39 acres in 1994 to Michael and Jirina Obolensky, whose ancestors were apparently Russian royalty. It was the Obolenskys who turned it into a B&B and they ran it for some 28 years as such up until a couple years ago. They still own it today.
Sadly, the beautiful Bird Cage now sits idle and untended as the Obolenskys decide what to do with the property. Efforts to determine their intentions were unsuccessful by this writer.
