Whitfield Cowles House East Granby, Connecticut

Text courtesy of the National Register of Historic Places, a program of the National Parks Service. Minor transcription errors or changes in formatting may have occurred; please see the Nomination Form PDF for official text. Some information may have become outdated since the property was nominated for the Register.

The Whitfield Cowles House, located in East Granby, Connecticut, is significant because of the important role the Cowles family played in the development of a number of nascent manufacturing entities located in the Farmington River Valley, the most important ofthese being devoted to the production of silver-plated wares (Criterion A). William Brown Cowles (1813-1887), son of the Reverend Whitfield Cowles (1764-1840), pioneered the domestic use of electroplating in the production of silverware, an industry in which Connecticut would rise to national prominence during the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Although Cowles's own small shop failed to turn long-term profits, it served as a springboard for a number of notable and prosperous manufacturers, including the Rogers Brothers Company, one of the founding partner firms within the nationally-prominent International Silver Company, originally of Meriden, Connecticut. Currently inhabited by a seventh consecutive generation of the Cowles family, the Whitfield Cowles House represents a fine example of Georgian-style Colonial architecture unusually well-preserved in its overall configuration and finishes (Criterion C). The Colonial Revival alterations to the fa~ade and east elevation are typical of early twentieth-century treatments to eighteenth-century homes and since they have sympathetically graced the home for over 110 years have attained historical significance in their own right.