This attractive wood structure was built for Frederick W. Green general manager of Confederation Life for the Maritime Provinces, with headquarters in the Metropole Building in Halifax. In 1899, Green retained Burke & Horwood to plan a house originally at the corner of Coburg Road and Oxford Street in Halifax but, later acquired a lot on the west side of Young Avenue at Atlantic Street in 1899. Those same architects, three years later, would go on to design, the now demolished, George S. Campbell residence across the street.

 

In the 1901 census, Frederick, his wife Annie, two sons, and two domestics lived in the home. By 1907-08 Mrs. Bertie Leslie, widow of Robert J. Leslie (Leslie, Hart & Co. - fish merchants, lobster buyers and exporters, canned goods, general brokers and agents), lived in the home.

 

In 1914, because of the construction of the Ocean Terminals and railway cut, contractor Samuel Manners Brookfield moved from his residence on Pleasant Street (now Barrington Street), and bought Mr. Green’s home, diagonally across from his son, John Waites Brookfield (the Brookfield-Stanbury House). He resided there until his death in 1924. The firm of S.M. Brookfield & Co. was one of the largest and most successful building contractors in the Maritimes in the late nineteenth century.

 

Architects Edmund Burke and J.C.B. Horwood created a design with a large gable and two-storey bay covered in cut shingles of various sizes and shapes. Picturesque details such as a belvedere topped by a bellcast roof and a lattice-work verandah compliment the geometry of the exterior. McKim, Mead and White and Peabody and Stearns were two of the notable firms of the era that helped to popularize the Shingle style, through their large-scale commissions for "seaside cottages" of the rich and the well-to-do in such places as Newport, Rhode Island and the village of East Hampton on the southeastern tip of Long Island. However, many of the concepts of the Shingle style were adopted by Gustav Stickley, and adapted to the American version of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Horwood strongly associated himself with the Arts and Crafts movement in the late 1890s.
 

This mansion has all the elements of a Shingle style home which usually have these features: continuous wood shingles on siding and roof, irregular roof line, cross gables, gables with dormers, eaves on several levels, porches, entry door usually recessed in the porch and asymmetrical floor plan. The foundation is made of ironstone - similar to Ardnamara's and there is half-timbering on the north side bay which weren't in the original plans. Masonry and plasterwork were carried out by well-known local contractor, Edward Maxwell Jr., and carpentry work by the well-known and successful firm of Chappell Brothers, Builders & Contractors out of Sydney, Cape Breton. One of the upstairs leaded glass windows has the year 1899 embedded in the stained glass.

The ground floor consisted of front entrance and vestibule, stair hall, coat closet, main stairway, drawing room with "cosy corner", library, dining room and verandah off the dining room, kitchen, serving pantry, store pantry, rear servants' stairs and rear porch. The first floor (in modern terms 2nd floor) consisted of nursery with cove ceiling, owner's bedroom with cove ceiling, dressing room, linen closet, spare bedroom with cove ceiling, main stairway with flower shelf, boy's bedroom, bathroom and servants' stairs. The basement had a workshop, store room, hall and stairway, larder, laundry, rear servants' stairs, boiler coal room, kitchen coal room, boiler room, and an unmarked smaller room probably used for storage.