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Brahe House
Rebecca Rogers
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Built in 1850 by Frederick Adolphus Brahe, the Brahe House is an example of Sand Hills Cottage architecture in the Greek Revival style. Its construction in this style with a full English basement makes the house an unusual building in the Augusta Downtown Historic District. Most other houses of the period in this area were more traditional townhouses.
A complete set of building specifications drawn up in March of 1850 survives entitled “Bill of Specifications of a House of F. A. Brahe.” These specifications indicate that the house was to be a three-story clapboard cottage. The ground floor was to be of “good brick, to be 4 fire places in basement, two with good modern stile mantelpieces… 4 rooms with a passage throu the centre…paved with brick and a good floor to be tongued and grooved of boards not exceeding seven inches wide…The body of the house to be covered with good Cyprus shingles…all the windows to have good Venetian shutters.” An interior stairway was to lead to the second story which also was partitioned into 4 rooms, each with a fireplace, and a central hallway. This level was to include a front “portico.” The attic story was to contain two rooms and a passage with another interior stairway fashioned with “good turned newell post.” Dormer windows were specified, two in front and one in the rear of the house. The plans end with specifications for servants’ quarters in the rear, and “a pailed fence dividing yard from gardens with gate in centre…The whole to be finished by the first of September, Eighteen Hundred and Fifty.” Some time later, the Brahe House was the first in Augusta to be wired for electricity, using a direct current system that was added after the house was built.
Frederick Adolphus Brahe came to Augusta from Albany, New York, prospering here as a silversmith and at one time holding the position of Official Tender of the City Clock. His son, Henry A. Brahe, continued the family business by then known as Brahe’s Jewelers. The years following the Civil War were lean for the Brahes, as for many other Southerners, and they finally sold the business in the early 1900s.
