President Woolsey House

Nestled in the heart of New Haven’s commercial district, the President Woolsey House at 250 Church is an impressive neoclassical style mansion, a historic landmark, and the site of Yale’s Student Mail and Shipping Center. The two-story brick home sits on a raised basement and has a temple-front façade, a gabled roof, and a cream-colored pediment enclosing an arch window. The six ionic pilasters on the Church Street façade have cracked and faded due to weathering. The eastern façade is more subdued and is defined by a classical entry porch supported by two Corinthian columns. Originally built in 1841 as a simple Greek Revival style home for Yale President Theodore Dwight Woolsey, the building was enlarged and given its contemporary façade in 1906 under the direction of architect Richard Clipston Sturgis. (1,2). Yale purchased the building in 1935, added storefront windows to the raised basement and converted the interior into commercial offices (3). 

Theodore Dwight Woolsey and his family were the home’s first occupants after the construction was finished in 1841. As the 1888 New Haven Atlas shows, at that time, the neighborhood was an elite residential district populated by professionals and professors (6). Woolsey, a Professor of Greek, was appointed Yale College’s President in 1846. Known as a strict disciplinarian, Woolsey made the requirements of senior year far more rigorous than they had previously been. His tenure is also notable for his decision to invest more into the History and Political Science Departments, as well as his decision to expand Yale’s Graduate School. Woolsey served in the position for 25 years and passed away in 1889. (6-8)

Next to occupy the home was Woolsey’s son Theodore Salisbury, a Professor of International Law and a notable public intellectual. (9) He contracted architect Richard Clipston Sturgis to renovate the home in 1901 and the work was completed in 1906 (2). During this time the Church Street area remained an exclusive residential enclave, though the 1901 Atlas of New Haven and the 1911 and 1924 Sanborn maps shows that civic and commercial buildings were rapidly encroaching on the neighborhood (10-12).

It is difficult to trace the exact occupancy of the house, but from 1923 until 1930 the New Haven Directory lists the sole occupant as Edith Woolsey. According to a New York Times obituary, Edith Woolsey appears to have been the granddaughter of Theodore Salisbury Woolsey (13-16).

In 1935, Yale University purchased the home and converted the interior space into office space (3). The first commercial occupant was medical supply company E.L. Washburn and Co, and, according to the New Haven Directory entries for 1961, 1970, and 1990, two dentists, an optometrist, and a variety of other small businesses like a florist and a travel agency subsequently occupied the building. (17-20). The building is now home to Yale’s Student Mail and Shipping Center.

By the 1930s the residential area had been almost entirely converted into the commercial and civic hub that it is today. The 1923 Sanborn Map updated to 1951 shows that Timothy Dwight College and the Trinity Church Parish replaced some of the property’s neighbors. (21)

The renovation of the house into commercial space shows the ability of a building to adapt to its changing environment. Though the structure has never been demolished, it has gone through three distinct phases of life (simple home, elegant mansion, functional commercial building) as the needs of its occupants changed over time.  

The Woolsey House is located just one block north of the New Haven Green in the center of New Haven’s downtown district—across from New Haven Superior Court and the Fidelity Investments building. It is one of the only residential-style buildings in the city’s bustling civic and commercial hub. 

This two story neoclassical mansion is laid out symmetrically, built from brick and stone, sits on a raised basement with storefront windows, and has a gabled roof perpendicular to Church Street. The home is seven bays wide. (1) The Church Street façade has six fluted ionic pilasters, four of which are located centrally to create a temple front. Immediately above the pilasters is a bracketed cornice and pediment that encloses an arch window. The eastern façade is less intricately detailed and its defining feature is a Greek Revival style entry porch with simple entablature supported by two Corinthian columns.

This blend of styles is a result of the building’s major redesign between 1901 and 1906, which was overseen by the notable New England architect Richard Clipston Sturgis. He admired the neoclassical form, especially the work of Bulfinch (4). Before the renovation, the building was a simple, charming Greek Revival brick home with a pair of chimneys on either side of the home (one chimney on the eastern façade was removed during the renovations, the other three remain) (1). The building connected to Church Street via a short pathway that led up to an entry porch supported by two rounded columns—similar to the entry porch that now defines the eastern façade (5). The expansion of the home and the addition of the pilasters, cornice, and pediment gave the building a more commanding and almost monumental presence on Church Street and told passers-by that members of one of Yale’s most important families resided there. 

1. New Haven Historic Resources Inventory, Phase 1, (New Haven: New Haven Preservation Trust, 1971), 157.

2. Building Permit No. 3751, February 15, 1901, New Haven Office of Building Inspection and Enforcement.

3. Building Permit No. 16825, July 26, 1935, New Haven Office of Building Inspection and Enforcement.

4. Maureen Meister, Arts and Crafts Architecture: History and Heritage in New England (Hanover: University Press of Portsmouth, 2014) 31-32.

5. “The President Woolsey House as it appeared in 1870,” Dana Collection, New Haven Museum, Image 398, 1870.

6. Atlas of the City of New Haven Connecticut (Philadelphia: G.M. Hopkins, 1888), 28.

6. Timothy Dwight, Memories of Yale Life and Men, accessed through Dana Collection, New Haven Museum.

7. Brooks Mather Kelley Yale: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 172-190.

8. “Theodore Dwight Woolsey,” Dana Archive, New Haven Museum, Image 390, 1898.

9. “Theodore Salisbury Woolsey,” Dana Archive, New Haven Museum, Image 398, 1902.

10. Atlas of New Haven Connecticut, (Birdgeport: Streuli and Puckhafer, 1911).

11. Sanborn Map Company of New York, Insurance Maps of New Haven Connecticut, Volume 1, 1901, 2.

12. Sanborn Map Company of New York, Insurance Maps of New Haven Connecticut, Volume 2, 1924, 208.

13. New Haven Directory (New Haven: Price and Lee Co. 1923).

14. New Haven Directory (New Haven: Price and Lee Co. 1930).

15. New Haven Directory (New Haven: Price and Lee Co. 1935).

16. “Paid Notice: Deaths NUTT, EDITH WOOLSEY,” New York Times, Aug. 27, 2005.

17. “E.L Washburn & CO. Advertisement,” Dana Collection, New Haven Museum, Image 400, 1936.

18. New Haven Directory (New Haven: Price and Lee Co. 1961).

19. New Haven Directory (New Haven: Price and Lee Co. 1970).

20. New Haven Directory (New Haven: Price and Lee Co. 1990).

21. Sanborn Map Company of New York, Insurance Maps of New Haven Connecticut, Volume 2, 1923 updated to 1951, 208.

Resources Consulted but not used in in-text citations:

1. 250 Church Street, City of New Haven Online Assessment Database.

2. Virginia Savage McAlester, A Field Guide to American Houses (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013), 247-266.