Gabrielle Messina remembers the moment she fell in love with the Brockie Mansion.
She hadn’t even stepped inside—she was standing on the doorstep, waiting for the real estate agent. Her husband, Frank, had convinced her to come see the historic York mansion.
“It was sort of on a whim—pure curiosity,” Gabrielle recalls. “The real estate photos did not paint a pretty picture of the house, because there was so much stripped away from it—it was just awful. The price kept dropping, and Frank said, ‘Let’s just go see it,’ and I said, ‘You’re crazy.’”
But there she was, on the doorstep of the 1912 Georgian Revival mansion—gutted by the previous owners, who had launched and never completed ambitious renovations. The shell of a once-glorious mansion was frozen in time, gathering dust.
As Gabrielle gazed through the glass, into the home’s foyer, her eyes rested on the foyer’s original, circa-1912 carved sandstone fireplace.
“Seeing that fireplace still intact, untouched—I fell in love with it,” Gabrielle says. “There wasn’t a lot that was still intact inside the house, but you could see the bones were still here, and it could be brought back to life.”
Walking through the neglected mansion with the real estate agent, Gabrielle knew she had her work cut out for her.
“It was hauntingly beautiful,” she describes. “Things were covered and draped in sheets and construction plastic, but you could see beauty under the layers of dirt. It was a mix of sadness and decay and beauty—this house was begging for someone to bring her back to life.”
And Gabrielle heard the call. That was in 2018. Today, just five years later, Gabrielle, Frank, and their three teenaged children call the Brockie Mansion “home.” Grit, as well as vision, restored her glory.
Putting the Pieces Back Together
The home’s Georgian Revival style is based on classic lines, symmetry, and balance—as evidenced in the home’s soaring columns, framing the front door. The Brockie Mansion is named for the adjacent spring-fed stream long known as “the Brockie.”
Outside, the Messinas’ renovations included landscaping. The driveway—part dirt, part crushed stones—was paved. Chimneys and their flashings were repaired. Original windows were given an added layer of protection—and energy efficiency—via storm windows.
Inside the 11,000-square-foot home, there was a huge puzzle, waiting to be put together.
“The original wood floors had been removed, and the floorboards were all bundled up. The moldings had been ripped off the walls,” Gabrielle recalls. “Putting it all back was like fitting giant Legos together.”
Old World Style
The entire kitchen is “brand-spanking new,” Gabrielle says, except for an ornate marble fireplace—not original to the home, but added by a previous homeowner. Gleaming new Carrara marble countertops match existing marble details such as bathroom windowsills.
“Marble does etch, scratch, and stain, so you have to be ok with imperfection,” says Gabrielle. “I figure there are thousand-year-old monuments, stairs, and statues in Europe made from it that still hold so much beauty with years of patina—then surely, a kitchen countertop where a bit of red wine is spilled and citrus may cause a bit of etching would be just fine.”
She chose unlacquered brass for kitchen and bathroom faucets and hardware, “so they would show patina over time, as opposed to being bright and shiny,” Gabrielle explains. “I embrace imperfection—it’s character.”
The couple co-managed much of the work themselves, hiring tradesmen for specific projects. Married for 20 years, Gabrielle and Frank were both born and raised in York—into families within the restaurant industry. The couple owned and operated a family-style Italian restaurant for 10 years.
Today, Frank works in commercial real estate. Gabrielle became a stay-at-home mom with a flair for design. She currently consults on commercial and residential design projects nationwide. While her renovation of the Brockie Mansion is a monumental project, Gabrielle kept the color palette simple.
“I felt like if we stripped the color back, the architectural detail would speak for itself,” Gabrielle explains.
That’s why she repainted the foyer and kitchen with untinted Benjamin Moore paint “straight out of the can.” It sets a light, airy tone that carries through the three-story home, its stairways, and landings.
The library is the exception. Gabrielle “embraced the moodiness” of the wood-paneled room and added Sherwin-Williams Tricorn Black to the walls.
By 2019, one year into renovations, the Messina family of five moved in.
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Past and Present
For a home constructed in 1912, the Brockie Mansion contains innovation—and quirks: an elevator, and a no-longer-functioning central vacuum system housed in an ornate basement unit emblazoned with “Victor” and “York, PA.”
The brick home, painted white in the 1950s, was constructed with cement walls that present renovation challenges—especially for modern bathroom plumbing.
And on every floor of the home, still preserved today, are circa-1912 fire hoses, neatly coiled, within metal compartments similar to electrical boxes. And there’s a reason for both the cement and hoses.
“The original Victorian home at this location burned down,” Gabrielle explains, “and the Smith family did not want another tragedy to occur.”
To understand who the Smiths were, and learn about the past and present Brockie Mansion, we turned to York historian Jim McClure, who explained the original Victorian-era mansion was built in 1873 for Jeremiah Sullivan Black, President Buchanan’s attorney general, then secretary of state. Home ownership passed to son Chauncey Black, a lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania.
In 1907, the Victorian-style Brockie Mansion was purchased by S. Morgan Smith, “probably the most important industrial leader in York County history,” says Jim. Business and home ownership passed to son C. Elmer Smith.
“At Christmas in 1911, C. Elmer Smith, on his way home from church, had a head-on collision with a trolley that immediately killed one of his sons, and it badly injured another son, who was recuperating at Brockie. They had all the fireplaces going, warding off the bitter cold,” Jim explains.
The flue overheated, the mansion caught on fire, and pumper trucks froze while trying to fight the flames.
“Some people think well-to-do people are insulated from loss, but that was a key moment in that family’s life, losing their son, then losing their home,” says Jim.
That’s why the family, determined to avoid future tragedy, rebuilt the 1912 Brockie Mansion with cement walls and fire hoses. It was designed by Robert A. Stair, who apprenticed under prolific York architect John Augustus Dempwolf.
“The Dempwolfs, [brothers], really designed York’s skyline,” says Jim, “so to the extent that Stair-Dempwolf did the second Brockie is a real plus to the architectural history of York County.”
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Serendipitous Stories
Gabrielle’s path first intersected with the Brockie Mansion about 10 years ago. Little did she know, she’d own it one day. A friend managing York’s ReStore asked if Gabrielle wanted to tag along and visit the Brockie Mansion.
“I didn’t know what Brockie Mansion was, but I said, ‘Yes,’” she recalls. “The last family who lived here was moving out.”
While her friend was interested in salvaging and reselling items, Gabrielle ended up doing the same.
“I purchased a bunch of lighting—three chandeliers I took to my then-home, and then I brought them back here to reinstall them four or five years later. It’s crazy to think about,” she reflects.
There’s yet another story of serendipity. Gabrielle recently acquired a treasure trove of Brockie Mansion photos, circa 1917.
A friend at an auction had spied a weathered black photo album titled “Views at Brockie” in gold lettering. While Gabrielle and her friend, bidding on her behalf, expected to snag it for a few hundred dollars, the bidding escalated to $1,700. Gabrielle has pored over the pricey yet priceless sepia-toned photos, gleaning clues and inspiration. The ferns she chose for the home’s patio mimic those of 1917.
“I’m grateful for the chance to be a caretaker, a steward, of this home,” Gabrielle says. “It’s definitely a labor of love—it sounds so cliché, but it’s true. When we decided to take on this project, I took the reins and said, ‘If we’re going to do it, I’m going to be all-in.’”
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To see more of the home, check @gabriellemessina on Instagram, where Gabrielle documented the home’s renovations, “more as a visual journal for me,” she describes. She also found community among “lots of people reviving old homes,” as well as venue opportunities, even attracting Anthropologie. To date, the retailer has staged about a dozen photo shoots—more than any other private home, Gabrielle says—at the Brockie Mansion.
You can find Jim McClure online at witnessingyork.com.
