Horatio G. Brooks founded the Brooks Locomotive Company in 1869, growing a profitable locomotive-building company
and establishing himself as the largest employer in Dunkirk and a civic leader. The mansion he purchased for himself,
wife and two daughters on Central Avenue in Dunkirk is pictured above in 1881, before Brooks had it updated
architecturally into the structure below. (Image courtesy Dunkirk Historical Museum.)
Brooks died at age 59 in 1887; his wife died 9 years later. In 1898, the Brooks daughters offered the mansion to the Young
Men's Association, a progressive Dunkirk group, for use as a library and hospital. The organization took up the challenge
and a year later, the Brooks Memorial Hospital opened in the Brooks home, thanks to private and city financing. The
Dunkirk Library occupied the front rooms until 1906 (when the city constructed a "Carnegie library.") For the first time,
the nearly 12,000 city residents and surrounding area did not have to make the long trip to Jamestown for
critical care in hospital facilities.
