Historic Home Tour

Marshall Michigan

Oaklawn Homecare
122 High Street

A Greek Revival, “cottage temple” style home built in about 1841-1842.

Oaklawn Hospital’s Homecare Health Services offices now occupy this one-story brick structure, which was built by jeweler-silversmith Daniel Pratt about 1841-1842.

The Greek Revival, “cottage temple” style home received a wood addition at the rear in the 1850's and another during the residency of Craig W. Brooks. The house was one dwelling recorded in the Historic American Buildings Survey for Michigan in 1941 and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

The four fluted Doric columns of the pedimented wood portico shelter two large, elongated windows and a sidehall entrance. The entrance, framed within tapered shouldered achitrave trim, feature traditional sidelights and transom. The cornice under the transom has a carved acanthus leaf design in cyma reversa mould that is still slightly visible under multiple layers of paint.

When this building was used as a home, passage could be made from the small entrance hall into the front bedroom as well as into the parlor. The entrance now leads into the former parlor, which is used as a reception area by Oaklawn Homecare. The wood xxx design with its only ornamentation the flat rope-like carving on the face of the shelf.

Daniel Pratt moved to Niles by 1849, but his daughter, Susan, took up residence in the home with her husband, George S. Wright. Wright, who was born in Rome, New York, was the son of Benjamin Wright, chief engineer of the Erie Canal.

He came to Marshall in 1835, was an early developer of the upper village (the east end of Marshall, where the earliest settlements and business buildings appeared). A private secretary, and later head cashier for banker Charles T. Gorham. The house eventually passed to his son, Thomas Nelson Wright, who was the grandfather of Craig Wright Brooks, who lived in the home from 1931 until his death over 50 years later. Craig received the home as a wedding present, and the location was handy for him to walk to work at the Brooks Rupture Appliance xxx was purchased in 1997 by Oaklawn Hospital and recently renovated as the Oaklawn Dialysis Center.

After Brooks’ death, the home was used as a rental for several years. In more recent history, the building has housed a doctor’s office and later the Calhoun County Health Department, and was purchased in 2000 by Oaklawn Hospital as an adaptive reuse to house Oaklawn Homecare offices.