346 Main Street: The Edmund Bowers house
art of the young village's commercial district, this lot was originally occupied by Morris F. Sheppard's "yellow house." Cleveland, writing in 1874, thought the old house was burned in "the conflagration that swept the Brooks Block," which took place in the summer of 1846. In any case, there isn't much evidence to show that there was anything at all on this lot until the house that stands there now was built.
Cleveland thought the house was built by James Cooley. He might have done, but Henry Hubbard is shown living there on the 1857 map of the village, and Hubbard sold it to Cooley's wife Elizabeth in 1859. The lot was part of the land sold by Morris F. Sheppard to Abner Pierce in 1805; Pierce sold part of his land and lost the rest to creditors. In 1824 Sheppard got the land back from A.P. Vosburgh, who acquired it in court. The deed states that Sheppard was already living there, presumably in the "yellow house."
Cooley is shown as the owner on the 1865 map, but within a year or two it had passed out of his ownership and into that of the Bowers family, where it remained until 1915. It was presumably Edmund Bowers, who acquired it in 1868, who undertook the renovations that transformed a rather late Greek Revival structure into an early and elegant example of Italianate style. Its present day appearance owes much to a further set of renovations that were done in 1916 by John C. Fox, only a year after he bought it from the Bowers heirs.
Plots
People related to this lot and structure:
Abraham Wagener
Related sites:
Related history:
Above right: 346 Main Street, built after 1846 in what must already have been quite old-fashioned Greek Revival style. The house was remodeled in 1868 with Italianate features; and again in 1916 with some Colonial Revival windows and other trim.
