Horchow Hall (Pelatiah Perit House)

Horchow Hall, home to the Jackson Institute of Global Affairs, is a grand nineteenth century mansion on the corner of Sachem Street and Hillhouse Avenue. Set in the Hillhouse Avenue Historic District, the brown stuccoed, Italian Renaissance Revival style building is one of the few surviving examples of architect Sidney Mason Stone’s work. Horchow Hall, once the residence of an elite New Haven family, was bought by Yale University in the 1930s. Today, the building has been repurposed for the Jackson Institute while still maintaining its original architectural character and integrity. The space is used for the offices of professors, fellows, and administrators, as well as hosting Jackson Institute events. Horchow is an historic treasure of Yale’s campus.

• 1859 - Pelatiah Perit and family
• 1988 - Henry L. Hotchkiss and family
• 1932 - Yale University purchased the building from the Hotchkiss family in 1932 and used the space for the following Yale affiliated institutions:
• Faulty Residences
• Peabody Museum of Natural History Laboratory and Offices
• School of Management
• Jackson Institute for Global Affairs

In the pre-colonial era and prior to city’s growth and expansion, the Quinnipiac peoples lived on the land that would eventually become New Haven. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the site that would become home to Horchow Hall and beyond was owned by James Hillhouse, the namesake of Hillhouse Avenue. Hillhouse used his extensive property was largely used for farm land and later subdivided the land into the boulevard that would later take his name. When he came of age, his son, James A. Hillhouse, along with Ithiel Town and Alexander Jackson Davis would work to develop the area. With the construction of the Farmington Canal, commercial development increased and lot sales and home construction bloomed. By the mid-nineteenth century, Hillhouse Avenue became a prestigious residential neighborhood lined with mansions for the societal elite. (5)

As many of the buildings on Hillhouse Avenue and in the Hillhouse Avenue Historic District, Horchow Hall was originally the residence for the elite of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Pelatiah Perit, a prominent New York merchant, had the house built in 1859 by architect Sidney Mason Stone. Perit lived in the house until his death in 1864 and his family continued to live there into the 1880s when it was bought by Henry L. Hotchkiss. (3) Hotchkiss and his family lived in the house until the 1930s. By this time, the house was a prominent building on Hillhouse Avenue.

In 1932, Yale University bought the house from the Hotchkiss family. (4) Yale used the building for a variety of purposes including faulty residences, laboratory and office space for the Peabody Museum of Natural History, and offices for the School of Management. Yale actively expanding and bought property including most of the buildings in the Hillhouse Avenue Historic District. Like Horchow Hall, the properties were maintained and preserved but repurposed from their original residential functions to academic ones. Once the space for society’s established elite now became a part of the university campus.

In 2013, Horchow Hall became the home for the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, following a generous donation by John Jackson. The Jackson Institute continues to call Horchow its home today.

Horchow Hall is in the Hillhouse Avenue Historic District. While most of the properties on Hillhouse Avenue and the neighboring streets are now owned by Yale University and used for academic purposes, the neighborhood maintains the character and integrity of the elite residential area it once was. The streets are lined with trees and mansions equal to the grandeur and scale of Horchow Hall. In a sense, it is a quiet oasis from the downtown and university campus just blocks away. Still, Horchow Hall and its neighboring buildings function as an integral part of Yale’s campus housing academic departments, institutes, classrooms, and laboratories. On any given day, hundreds of students and faculty can be seen walking about the area.

Horchow Hall is a 20,000 square-feet mansion located at the top of Hillhouse Avenue. The building was designed and built by the architect Sidney Mason Stone starting in 1859 and modeled after the Ezekiel Trowbridge House (now the Center Church Parish House) also built by Stone in the mid-nineteenth century. The brown stuccoed, Italian Renaissance Revival style building is one of the few surviving examples of architect Sidney Mason Stone’s work. It features a symmetrical and rectangular form; a flat, low hipped roof with the cantilevered cornice lines; an arched door with carved rope mouldings; a covered entry porch; and a tall structure. Sometime after 1888, while owned by the Hotchkiss family, a large Tudor library was added to the house, carefully designed as to match the existing exterior. (1)

Over the years, Horchow Hall has undergone a series of renovations which primarily were intended to restore and preserve the architectural and cultural integrity of the building while making accommodations for its changing functions. The most recent renovations were in 2013. Clerestory Construction Consulting managed the 2013 renovations with Apicella + Bunton Architects LLC as the architects and Shawmut Construction as the general contractor. The renovations included new flooring, wall finishes, and lighting updates on the interior. A kitchenette, additional restrooms, and a catering servery were created by a reconfiguration of the first floor. The exterior renovations included restorations of the covered entry porch, window casings and trim, and the cantilevered cornice lines of the roof. (2)

1. Elizabeth Mills Brown, New Haven: A Guide to Architecture and Urban Design (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), 133-137.
2. “Hillhouse Avenue Historic District,” The New Haven Preservation Trust, accessed February 26, 2018, http://nhpt.org/index.php/about_new_haven/list_of_historic_districts/hillhouse_avenue_historic_district/.; “Horchow Hall Renovation,” Clerestory Construction Consulting, accessed February 26, 2018. https://clerestorycc.squarespace.com/horchow-hall-renovation.
3. Henrietta Frances Silliman Dana, Hillhouse Avenue from 1809-1900 (New Haven: Tuttle, Morehouse, & Taylor Co., 1907), 12.
4. Special to The New,York Times. "YALE BUYS HOTCHKISS LOTS." New York Times (1923-Current File), Jan 17, 1932. https://search.proquest.com/docview/99644376?accountid=15172.
5. “Hillhouse Avenue Historic District,” The New Haven Preservation Trust, accessed February 26, 2018, http://nhpt.org/index.php/about_new_haven/list_of_historic_districts/hillhouse_avenue_historic_district/.