Frank Brookhouser

Who was Frank Brookhouser?

Frank Brookhouser was an American journalist and writer.

Brookhouser began his career in journalism as an editor for his hometown paper, the Ford City News. He became sports editor at the Monongahela Daily Republican in Monongahela, Pennsylvania, then landed a beat reporting job in Philadelphia in 1936 at the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. The Philadelphia Inquirer hired him in 1939, where he became a popular columnist. He moved his column, "A Man about Town", back to the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin in 1953 for the remainder of his journalism career. In the 1950s he also did weekly television show and a daily evening radio show.

Brookhouser's columns were re-edited into his book portrait of Philadelphia, Our Philadelphia, the first sentence of which pays tribute to typesetters Hubert Blaine Wolfe­schlegel­stein­hausen­berger­dorff and Benjamin Franklin as exemplar Philadelphians. While writing "A Man about Town", Brookhouser had previously attracted national attention by omitting the letter "u" in reporting Wolfe­schlegel­stein­hausen­berger­dorff's 1952 voter registration under the 35-letter surname.

As well as journalism, Brookhouser published hundreds of short stories and one novel.