Woodlands (Brick House)

Different architectural influences came together to form Woodlands, a brick house now painted white. It began as a two-story, single-pile Federal house. Soon afterwards, a rear dining room and lateral stair hall were added. In 1854, physician Alexander J. Brodnax inherited the house and soon after he married Ellen A. Mallory of Philadelphia, who brought her urban taste to Brunswick. When they enlarged and remodeled the house in 1860, they based its plan on Design LVII, Plate XC by Philadelphia architect Samuel Sloan, as noted by Brodnax's pencilled notations in his 1860 edition of Sloan's The Model Architect still at Woodlands. It seems likely that Jacob Holt, then living in North Carolina but also still working in his native Southside, was the builder hired for the remodeling. According to family tradition, and visual evidence, the house's commanding portico was adapted from the even grander one at the Bruce's Berry Hill (HX22) in Halifax County.

The remodeling produced a Greek Revival Southside mansion with some Italianate details. The original roof of the front section was reoriented to accommodate the two-story pedimented portico across what then became a gable-end facade. Although it does resemble the portico at Berry Hill, Woodlands has Italianate features, especially the bracketed cornice that might be attributed to Holt. Unlike Berry Hill's eight massive Doric columns, here the six columns are slender tapered octagons and the pediment has an arched window that intrudes awkwardly into the top of the gable. The brackets supporting the eaves of the new portico were extended all around the building, ceilings were heightened, rooms were added, and the first-floor windows were lengthened. Altogether, a more up-to-date house was created.