26-acre estate, in Townshend hands since 1797.
History is for sale for $2.25 million on the East Shore — along with a whole lot of room for overnight guests of multiple species.
The sale price is for the 26.25-acre Raynham Estate fronting at 709 Townsend Ave.
One of New Haven’s most prominent families has owned that property since 1797, when local merchants Isaac and Kneeland Townshend bought it. The Townshends constructed the main six-bedroom, two-and-half story Colonial home, now on the Federal Register of Historic Places, in 1804. The sprawling grounds include carriage and caretaker’s houses, a gazebo, and plenty of nature for a builder to destroy replace with new condos or rental properties.
The property stayed in the Townshend family’s hands, and remained a single-family residence, through more than two centuries of change in New Haven.
The last of the civic-leader Townshends, Doris (“Deb”), died this past August at the age of 98. (Click here to read in her obit about some of her many community responsibilities.) Her husband Henry died in 2012.
Now the heirs are selling the property. (Wiggin & Dana attorney David Kesner, agent for the trust that assumed ownership of the property after Henry’s death, declined comment for this article.)
The city assessor’s database — notorious for appraising and taxing properties at a fraction of the value they end up selling for — appraises the estate’s worth at $1.085 million.
Zillow began listing the estate this week at the $2.25 million asking price.
If some recent bidding wars in town are any indication, offers may come in higher.
“That sounds cheap in today’s market,” noted one close observer of the market who’s familiar with the property. “Some developer’s going to scoop that up in a minute.”
Anstress Farwell of the Urban Design League recommended that the eventual buyer preserve “a rare historic and cultural resource of national significance.”
“Like the East Shore’s historic lighthouse, Raynham has been a vivid and cherished landmark — a beautiful vista from land and harbor, for almost two centuries,” Farwell argued.
“The Gothic Revival house is an outstanding example of its type. The romantic Gothic facades were built around the original Federal style home. Beautiful detailing from this earlier period can still be seen inside the house. The house and its historic setting, including its mature landscape with champion trees, original barns and outbuildings — all in excellent condition — makes this a place where a serious effort to find a buyer committed to its preservation is imperative.”
Preservation Trust’s Elizabeth Holt said the group is foremost concerned that the property and house not be “physically divided and/or altered without respect to its history and significance.” She spoke of “endless and creative” possible uses, “such as an event space.”
Melissa Bailey File Photo
Mascola: The late Henry Townshend wanted land preserved.
Chuck Mascola, a lifelong East Shore resident and former alder, said he was “shocked” and ”disappointed” to see the house go on the public market without restriction.
He recalled chatting with the late Henry Townshend about the property’s future. Townshend had at one point expressed an intent to donate that property to the New Haven Colony Historical Society, Mascola said.
Now Mascola fears that “an irresponsible and insensitive development” will “destroy” the property.
“I had hoped for a continuation of what is such an iconic part of the East Shore of New Haven: Private ownership by people who are stewards of the land,” Mascola said. “I realize that might be unrealistic in this day and age.”
The main single-family residence.