House History
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Christiana Lindsey was from an old, wealthy family in Mercer. She inherited money in 1880 and bought two lots on East Butler Street in the borough of Mercer, and she had the house constructed in 1881. It is of three-brick construction, with bricks taken from the local Meshannock Creek. The architecture is Italianate with built-in gutters, corbels, eyebrow windows, and a two-story bay window. The original widow's walk, or decorative fence, has been reconstructed and put back in place on the main roof, which is flat. The house has three porches, two of which have porch swings. Because this house was built by a woman, which was not typical of the era, the inside of the house radiates Victorian femininity. The floors are red oak with black walnut inlay, and the woodwork is hand grained. Hand graining is the process by which an artist uses feathers, paintbrushes, and other supplies to make one type of wood look like another. For example, in the living room, the poplar wood is painted to look like walnut and black walnut, to match the real black walnut mantle. Christiana hired an artist to come down from New York City and stay with the family for six months and hand grain almost all of the wood in the house. The Brookover family has preserved all of the hand graining; the only thing added was polyurethane.
Excluding antiques bought by the Brookover family, everything in the house is original. There are four mantles and countless chandeliers. (However, some of the chandeliers are not original; for example those in the parlor and kitchen.) There is also a Steinway Square Grande Piano, circa 1863.
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