Contributed photos
How do you say, “Happy birthday” to a 150-year-old house?
By throwing a party for those who over the years once lived in the Wooster Square building known as the Cowell House, of course.
That’s what The Priory Condo Association did Sunday when residents who lived in the historic structure for the past 27 years — along with their neighbors — gathered to honor the house’s heritage which dates back to 1869.
“Nothing’s better than having a front row seat on this beautiful historic square,” says Bill Kux, condo president and one of the building’s residents since the Cowell House and four other properties in the area were turned into condo units in 1992.
The building, designed in an Italianate style of architecture and which includes a cupola, was originally a brick building, and later covered in stucco, grooved to resemble stone. Architectural details, such as molded ceilings, 2/2 window sash and cut-stone window headers and sills, the hall’s stained glass window and a 12-foot living room mirror on the main floor, have been well-preserved. A rare original Italianate entry door survives, too.
The construction of private residences around Wooster Square ended in 1873 when an economic depression hit following boom times right after the Civil War.
The Cowell residence — described as “a very late version of the Villa Style” — was first owned by businessman and entrepreneur Henry Cowell, one of the owners of the Glebe Building at the corner of Chapel and Church Streets. The Cowell family, who lived in the house through the turn of the century, bequeathed it to a French order of nuns in 1912 who turned it into the St. Joseph’s Guest House.
Cowell died in 1904 at the age of 74. His obituary reported that he was “said to have been worth about $150,000.”
The Sisters of Holy Ghost also managed the neighboring Adler House (circa 1871), as well as a chapel-with-classrooms which was built in 1929 that connected the two houses and another three-story property in the rear of the Cowell House and which abutted Hughes Place. The properties — which also served as housing for single women — were sold and converted into condos in the 1980s.
“I feel it is a privilege to live and help maintain this special home for future generations,” says Bonnie Rosenberg, another of the building’s unit owners, a member of the Historic Wooster Square Association and the Wooster Square Conservancy.
Over the years, the building — which is located at the corner of Greene and Academy Streets — has seen the neighborhood change dramatically: From the flourishing of the post-Civil War mercantile class, followed by a wave of mostly working-class Italian immigrants, to periods of decline during and after the Depression, only to be revived with New Haven’s urban development in the 1960s, followed by a period of economic recessions, only to see a wave of gentrification of the neighborhood at the turn of the millennium.
Throughout it all the stately Cowell House has persevered as it overlooked the square’s changes, including demolitions of many of its original neighboring buildings, protests, cherry blossom festivals, graduations, and even the discovery of “the Jesus Tree,” which made national headlines in 1992.
Frank Rizzo is a freelance arts writer covering Connecticut for more than 40 years. He is also a resident of the Cowell House.