Brookside Museum

Brookside Museum, also known as the Aldridge House, is a historic house on the western edge of downtown Ballston Spa, New York, built in stages beginning around 1792 to 1793 as an inn for visitors drawn to the naturally carbonated spring waters that gave the village its name. Its design is primarily Georgian-Federal, with Greek Revival elements added later by owner Josiah Aldridge; the novelist James Fenimore Cooper is said to have worked on parts of The Last of the Mohicans while staying there, and the building later served as a school for boys, private residence, boarding house, sanatorium and apartments. The Saratoga County Historical Society purchased the 1.5-acre triangular property in 1970 and converted it into a museum, and it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975 as the first of four Ballston Spa properties so listed.