Middlebrook is one of the best-preserved rural villages in Augusta County. Platted in 1799 and enlarged in 1805 on one of the two improved roads between Staunton and Lexington, the village boasted several large dwellings and storehouses by 1803. Sources from the 1880s describe Middlebrook as one of the most enterprising and prosperous villages in Augusta County. By that time, a substantial African American community had developed on the west side of town. Today, houses and commercial buildings along the old turnpike (Middlebrook Road) maintain the character and scale of the village as it appeared during the height of its prosperity in the 1880s. Like many of the community's earliest houses, the former Jacob Arehart Tavern (c. 1820; later additions; 3730 Middlebrook Road) began as a two-room-plan log structure. Now a six-bay weatherboarded building, it has the long facade characteristic of taverns. James McCorkle's Store, now Middlebrook General Store (c. 1879; 3682 Middlebrook), has a dramatically high parapet with a lunette and a cornice supported by paired brackets. The modest brick Holy Trinity Lutheran Church (1880s; 3638 Middlebrook) combines Gothic Revival in its pointed-arched windows with Greek Revival in the gable-end returns and the square, frame, domed belfry.
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