the J.C. Havely House

Dear Liza,

When we first moved to this neighborhood, we fell in love with the J. C. Havely House, just katty corner across Belmont Street. It is rumored to be haunted and certainly looks the part. At that time it was being run as The Pied Cow.

The Pied Cow served delicious ginger cake, ice cold sangria, baked Brie on fresh bread, and lots of other goodies. It was amazing. But when the pandemic hit, the strain on both the business and the owner was just too much. The Pied Cow closed and the building was sold.

But good news! The house is soon to be opened as The Foxtrot Lounge, and on Saturday we got to see the inside of the house, the garden, and have a short chat with the new owner, Britain Stephens.

Britain (who is extremely camera shy) and his crew have cleaned up the large garden space and installed beautiful structures. Some of these feel like classy cabanas and will be good for shelter from the sun and moderate rain. Others are just for fun.

Lots of folks were looking around and enjoying the space.

The inside of the Havely House has gotten a facelift as well, and now feels like a friendly, high-end Haunted Mansion. Since the Havely House is home to a ghost called Aunt Lydia, this seems fitting.

We didn’t try any of the food on offer, but there was wine, beer, sangria, and a variety of bruschettas. Britain told us he plans on a proper opening come October… Just in time for Halloween!

And you know we will be there.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Dear Liza,

I have told you about the delightfully quirky, slightly spooky coffee house in our neighborhood called The Pied Cow. But now I have learned more about it.

The Pied Cow is in the house and yard of the J. C. Havely House, built in 1893 by Mr. Havely, who is called a railroad tycoon because he made a lot of money building railroads around the Northwest. It was a mile and a half out of town at the time, reached by trolley car or wagons over muddy roads. It is a Queen Anne Vernacular Style, and has lots of decoration. A square tower with balconies and a roof like a pyramid, and details my Momma called “gingerbread” give it a really unusual look. It is currently painted a shade of green that looks like faded moss.

During the 1890s and early 1900s, the house hosted Suffragist meetings. That means people met here to plan how to change laws to allow women to vote.

After the Havely family moved away and sold the house sometime after the 1920s, I can’t find out who lived in it until the early 1960s when it was used by historic restorers Ben Milligan and Jerry Bosco as a storage place for architectural bits and pieces they used in re-building old houses.

In 1979, Ben and Jerry offered the building as a place for some friends’ new restaurant, Buttertoes. The friends, three sisters named Carolyn, Charmon and Cherous, ran Buttertoes for ten years, using family recipes. The popular, story-themed restaurant also hosted children’s tea parties and was known for making delicious pastries.

It was during the Buttertoes years that the ghost, Aunt Lydia, was discovered. The sisters reported that someone would walk into the back room, which had no exit, and there would be no one there. The people who rented to upstairs apartment reported furniture moving by itself and having strange dreams. A spiritualist was called in and confirmed that a spirit was present.

Maybe it was the spiritualist who gave the name Aunt Lydia to the ghost, and described her as wearing a black, high collared dress with her hair pinned up. I still have no information on WHOSE Aunt she might have been.

When Ben and Jerry passed away in 1989, the sisters closed the restaurant and sold the building to the owners of The Pied Cow. They opened Buttertoes Gift Shop down the road on Hawthorne, which ran for another 13 years.

The Pied Cow has been a funky place to have coffee, drink sangria, smoke a hookah, or have some of the best ginger cake ever for almost 30 years now!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Tag: the J.C. Havely House

Re-opening a Favorite

The Pied Cow