Donna-Marie filled this guest room with blues and furnishings that remind her of her late mother.
Moody Brick Owners Put Their Own Touches on Historic Home
Long shrouded in mystery, the Harris-Moody Brick house still stands roughly 180 years after its construction, having survived time, war, fires, vandals, and ghost hunters.
Today, visitors turning into the gate on County Road 64 are greeted by a landscape of limelight hydrangeas and a fountain deep enough for owner Rob Chiroux to swim with the family’s Maltipoo, Itty-Bitty Rosebud.
Located 6 miles from Hollywood, the Harris-Moody Brick house — also known as the Moody Brick or just The Brick — is the only known pre-Civil War brick home still standing in Jackson County. Built in the mid-1800s, the home was once part of a 2,500-acre plantation.
Donna-Marie added a half-bath under the staircase in the front foyer.
Rob and Donna-Marie Chiroux bought the house in July 2021. They wanted to make it a venue, thinking renovations would take a year. They moved from Huntsville — where Rob works for a NASA contractor and Donna-Marie has a real estate business — and spent 4 years giving The Brick another lease on life.
Living in a mobile home during renovations, they finally moved into the house a year ago. Rob works from home, and Donna-Marie opened a local office. They share their historic home with Bernedoodles, Vigo and McGregor, and Maltipoos, Rosebud and Maizie Magnolia.
The couple knows the stories surrounding their home. They’ve heard about the escapades of local teenagers with Ouija boards. They’ve heard about the hauntings.
“Everybody that comes and stays, they say they sleep better here than they’ve slept anywhere in their life. It’s just a very loving, welcoming place now.” — Donna-Marie Chiroux
When they hosted a meeting of the Jackson County Historical Society in August, more than 200 people showed up. Guests toured the house and shared their own memories of the place. The society presented the couple with a Founders Award, an unexpected honor, Donna-Marie says.
The Chirouxes want the house to be more than a setting for macabre tales.
“It just always feels like a hug,” Donna-Marie says. “Everybody who comes and stays, they say they sleep better here than they’ve slept anywhere in their life. It’s just a very loving, welcoming place now.”
Early Years
This room, adjacent to the kitchen, serves as Donna-Marie Chiroux’s home office, while her husband, Rob, works in an office upstairs.
Some of Moody Brick’s history has been lost to time. The identity of the original architect and even the exact timeframe of the building’s construction are uncertain. Local history accounts date the home’s completion as 1848, but the Chirouxes believe the home was actually finished years earlier.
The Moody Brick sits on land originally owned by Caleb B. Hudson, whose daughter and son-in-law, Mary Ann and Carter Overton Harris, built and lived in the house.
The home’s walls are made of 3 layers of red brick crafted from clay dug on-site. The bricks in the scullery contain footprints of small critters and bullet holes. Fire heavily damaged the home in 1888, but the brick walls remain.
Brothers Miles and James Moody bought the house and property in the 1870s. Miles and his wife, Rebecca, lived in the home, which the Moody descendants owned for nearly 120 years.
The Moody Brick’s ground-level kitchen was not added to the back of the house until the early 1900s. Prior to that, the kitchen and smokehouse were in the cellar. The window directly above the gas stove was added so Donna-Marie can look out on the property while she cooks.
The home has a mix of Federal, Victorian, Italianate, and Greek revival architectural touches. A smokehouse and ground-level kitchen were added to the back of the house in the early 1900s. Around 1916, a Victorian porch was replaced with a portico supported by 6 columns.
When Moody descendants sold the home and 21 acres in 1990 to Ron and Diane Lee, the house had been sitting empty for more than a decade. Graffiti covered the walls, fires were set inside, and the stairs leading to the second story were torn out by vandals.
The Chirouxes, who bought the house from Ron Lee, made the home their own, preserving historic touches where they could. They installed the front fountain and the second-story balcony that now stretches across the front of the house. Donna-Marie used a mix of antique pieces, fabrics, high-end wallpaper, and even Etsy purchases throughout the house. A mural painted in the master bedroom honors a large oak tree that shaded the cemetery for decades before it fell in 2022.
Ornate door handles enhance the doors that lead down into the home’s wine cellar and a room set aside for the Chirouxes’ grandchildren.
Rob cleared the overgrowth around the small cemetery. 2 stone crypts and a handful of headstones are all that remain of any grave markings. Carter Harris and his daughter are among those buried in the cemetery, as are Miles and Rebecca Moody.
“I keep the area clean,” he says. “I got rid of all the brush, all the crud, trees, all the junk. I took all the tree canopies up so that you can walk around underneath, so that when the sun rises in the morning, it heats Rebecca’s tombstone. She gets to see the sun.”
Haunted Tales
Rosebud and McGregor sit on the front porch of the Moody Brick.
People all over the area have experienced hauntings at the Moody Brick, and they’ve shared those tales with the current inhabitants.
The Chirouxes chalk up many of the experiences to overactive imaginations and underage inebriation. But the couple says the home has its share of spirits.
The house was reportedly used by Union troops during the Civil War, and legends grew of unmarked graves on the property. A contractor looking for sewer and water lines with ground-penetrating radar actually identified 61 sites believed to be graves. The Chirouxes marked the sites with bricks left from the home’s past renovations.
The headstones of Miles and Rebecca Moody are among the few marked graves in a cemetery on the property.
“I have 2 rules about this property,” Rob says. “As long as the gate is open and we’re home, we want the world to know, Jackson County to know, that you can come out here anytime you want, especially if you’re a descendant of these people. You want to come out after church and put flowers on their graves, knock yourself out. But be respectful.”
But no ghost hunters and no metal detectors, Rob says.
“People will ask me, ‘Is it haunted?’” he says. “Yeah, it’s haunted. But there’s nothing negative here. We’ve made this a positive place. I’ve done my best to chase off any negativity or evil.”
Rob and Donna-Marie stand on the front steps of their home.
The owners discussed making the property a venue for weddings and other events. Donna-Marie already has friends who either want to get married on the property or who want their children to tie the knot at The Brick. She wants to open it up for charity events and envisions youth choirs performing or kids learning to fish in the pond.
When Rob retires, Donna-Marie says they will likely downsize, but she says the time and money spent on the Moody Brick have been worth it.
“We’re taking it 1 day at a time,” she says. “At this moment, it’s our home.”
Alabama’s winters can bring anything from balmy sunshine to freezing storms, sometimes in the same week. So, residents need to be ready for all types of weather, and that means making sure your home is prepared, too.
With winter’s arrival, most of us alternate between hunker-down mode, staying inside to keep cozy, and holiday havoc, busily shopping and transforming our homes into brightly lit, flashing, fabulously festive feasts for the eyes. Both can bring comfort and joy, but this season usually puts an extra dent in our bank accounts, whether from generous gift-giving or higher electricity use to heat and deck out our homes.
Enjoy a merry evening of beautiful sights, holiday sounds, and tasty treats when Stevenson City Park lights up to welcome the yuletide season on Saturday, December 13. Carols will fill the air, and both Santa Claus and his unlikely helper, the Grinch, will be on hand to add to the festivities.
If your house is the gathering spot this Thanksgiving, electricity is not likely to be the top thing on your mind. However, prepping a feast for family and guests can take a shocking turn if electrical safety is not part of the meal plan.
