History & Renovation

According to The Monadnock Center for History & Culture at the Peterborough Historical Society, the building was erected in 1837 as The Peterborough Academy, a private secondary school. In 1870, the financial impact of the Civil War left the town’s residents unable to sustain the school and it closed its doors. The following year the Academy Corporation began leasing the building to the town, and nine years later gifted it “to be maintained as a park and Memorial building.” 

In 1889, the former Academy became the A. F. Stevens Post of the Grand Army of the Republic, a fraternal organization of veterans of the Union Army. Of the 209 men from Peterborough who enlisted during the Civil War, 45 died as a result of injuries or disease. The statue that stands before the G.A.R. Hall honors those soldiers, along with two officers’ wives who perished aboard the West Point when it sank in the Potomac River. After the disbanding of the G.A.R., the town leased the building to various organizations, most recently the Creating Positive Change Coalition, which used it as a teen center. CPCC lost funding in 2011, and the building remained vacant until we purchased it in 2017.

After 18 months of blood, sweat, tears, and beers, the building was finally ready to once again serve as a welcoming meeting place for locals and a landmark building for the town of Peterborough. Post & Beam Brewing opened its doors to the public in July of 2018.