A collection of luxury, modern Italian furnishings is not the kind of thing you would expect to see inside a former, traditionally built Odd Fellows hall in a small town in coastal Maine.
Not only does such furniture fill the top floor of the former Odd Fellows hall in Brooklin, on the corner of Reach and Center Harbor roads, but you can rent the apartment it’s in for the weekend.
The structure, built in 1896, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Over the years, it has housed the local post office and a general store. When it was proposed for the historic listing in the late 1980s, it was still hosting Odd Fellows meetings on the top floor.
Now, in addition to the Italian furnishings, it has a boat shop on the first floor and another vacation rental apartment on the second floor.
The Independent Order of Odd Fellows continues to operate and own buildings throughout the state, including a prominent lodge in Portland, but the former IOOF hall in Brooklin is one of a few in Maine that have been repurposed by new owners.
Among them is a former lodge building in Pembroke that now houses the Greenhorns Agrarian Library, and another in Norway that is being converted into affordable housing. The former Odd Fellows hall in Denmark now houses a local community arts center, while some others are now owned by the towns where they are located and used for community gatherings.
The conversion of the building in Brooklin was completed in 2020 after the owner of the Italian furnishings, architect John Ike, teamed up with local resident Robert Baird, who made a career of restoring historic buildings, and Brooklin Boat Yard owner Steve White to purchase the hall in 2017.
The structure had been neglected after the Odd Fellows sold it and relocated to a smaller, newer building two miles away on Bay Road. All three men were familiar with the local landmark and wanted to help save and breathe new life into the old hall.
“Because that’s one of the most prominent buildings in Brooklin, and it was going to hell in a handbasket, and I didn’t want to see it just go away,” Baird told Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors magazine.
The trio of new owners with expertise in building, design and historic preservation set about repairing the foundation, replacing the roof and windows, and renovating the interior for new uses.
The historic appearance of the building had to be maintained because of the national listing and, with three partners, it made sense for each to oversee the design of one of its floors.
The first floor, maintained by White, was converted into a small boat shop for Brooklin Boat Yard. The interior space was opened up to make room for boats and equipment. To allow for boats to be moved in and out, barn doors were built into the side of the building but disguised with the same exterior clapboard as the rest of the structure to make it blend in when it was closed.
On the second and third floors, which are accessible by a stairwell tower on the northwest corner of the building, the large open spaces that had been used for community and Odd Fellow gatherings also had to be kept open instead of being subdivided into smaller rooms.
Each open space on the upper floors was converted to a large combined living and kitchen space, with modern cooking equipment installed along its western wall.
On the second floor, maintained by Baird, the large space has dining tables, sofas, large chairs, a murphy bed hidden in a cabinet, a ping pong table, and an arcade-style basketball hoop.
The third floor, maintained by Ike, houses his collection of Italian furniture and art. The living room-kitchen also has a large dining table, sofas and chairs, and a pool table.
Each upper floor also has two separate, fully renovated bedrooms that share a modernized bathroom.
