130 Main Street
Description
- Media Type
- Image
- Description
- Name: Walas Funeral Home
Location: 130 Main Street
Legal Description: Plan 28 Lot 7 and Part Lots 6, 16, 17
Property: House (now a Funeral Home)
Date of Construction: Circa 1882
Heritage Status: Listed
Summary of Cultural Attributes:
Historical: This stately house is located on a 2/3-acre plot that is part of an early 1800s Crown grant to David M. Rogers for part of Lot 2, Concession 2. (OLR records that the Crown grant was issued in 1819, but they also indicate that the property was bargained and sold by Mr. Rogers to Josiah Proctor in 1814).
Between 1881 and 1883, Harriet Proctor extended a mortgage exceeding $1600 on this plot to Francis C. Biggar (spinster), who is believed to have built the house, or at least most of it, in that period. In 1886, the property was acquired for $2650 by Thomas Murphy, who in turn sold it in 1897 to Deborah Walker. (It's worthy to note here that in the same year Thomas sold a part of the property to a Lydia Brintnell, who probably lived in a smaller adjacent house for the next 25 years and then extended a mortgage on it to Burton Brintnell). In 1934, the house was purchased by Burton E. Brintnell, who apparently had bought a funeral business from a Mr. Chapin that had been run from the rear of a Main Street furniture store. Upon purchase of the said house, Burton is believed to have converted the west side of the lower floor to a funeral parlour and used the east side and upper floor to living quarters. About that time, the Brintnells also started an ambulance service.
In 1945, Burton sold the property as well as the funeral and ambulance business to Arthur. B. Ridley and then two years later it went to Harold K. Cummings. Later it became the Snider Funeral Home, then the Mackey Funeral Home, and then in 1987 the Walas Funeral Home - operated by Mark Walas, who then sold it in 2000 to Walas Funeral Home Ltd. The last sale marked a cessation of using any part of the building for living space.
Architectural: This very large three-storey house with its large, rounded and pillared lower floor porch and third floor balcony display a Colonial Revival style. It features a large, rounded front lower porch (now with decorative balcony and balustrade), a rounded balcony on the third floor, two front gables with decorations and posts. The front door has side windows. Today it has vinyl siding and windows.
It has a tail on the rear, which may actually have been the house or living quarters of Lydia Brintnell in earlier years. In recent years a one-floor addition was built on the east side.
Sources: MPAC; OLR Records; Pictorial Brighton, 1859- 1984, p.93; That's Just the Way We Were, 2006, p. 124-5.
- Publisher
- Municipality of Brighton Register of Properties of Cultural Heritage Value or Interest
- Local identifier
- abdap_munb-029
- Language of Item
- English
- Copyright Statement
- Copyright status unknown. Responsibility for determining the copyright status and any use rests exclusively with the user.
- Contact
- Brighton Digital ArchivesEmail:brightondigitalarchives@gmail.com
Agency street/mail address:Brighton Public Library
35 Alice Street
P.O. Box 129
Brighton, ON K0K 1H0
