Sale pending on stately historical mansion
One of the most avid promoters of Louisville's Olmsted Parks system in the 19th century built his own home in 1907 on a prime wooded site in the Highlands high above Cherokee Park, one of the original parks designed by Frederick Law Olmsted.
Businessman and civic leader Col. Andrew Cowan's Tudor Revival-style country estate near Big Rock also has had a distinguished history as home to members of the Reynolds Metals Co. family — hence the aluminum roof — and finally the Cleve Gatchel family. Five generations of the family had operated the W.D. Gatchel & Sons photography and graphic arts supply business, started in 1862, which closed on East Market Street in about 2001.
Following Gatchel's death last November, the hidden-away mansion now is attracting a lot of attention and is poised to enter a new chapter of its century-plus existence. It went up for sale for $899,000 last month, when a huge, two-day estate sale held Sept. 12-13 attracted hundreds of people to the eight-bedroom home, 2339 Brookside Drive in the Cherosen Hills subdivision at the end of Woodbourne Avenue.
A local family living in the same general area already has a contract to buy the house, contingent on selling their own house, and they plan to fully renovate the house and live there. The father talked about their plans this weekbut said they don't want to be identified yet, in case the deal doesn't go through. His grandfather once ran a print shop that bought supplies from Gatchel's, he said.
The plan is good news to John Gatchel, Cleve Gatchel's son, who worked in the family business and now lives in a renovated apartment above the estate's carriage house, which became a four-car garage. He has fond memories of living in the main house with his parents, grandmother and siblings but thought perhaps only investors would be interested in it to fix up and resell, he said.
His family originally had moved there in 1977 from a "regular" house about a half-mile away in Highlands-Douglass, he said.
Gatchel talked this week about the house while traversing all three floors. He recalled playing hide and seek in the recesses of the vast structure and pointed out a first-floor solarium, a music room that still has an organ in it, a bathroom made almost entirely of variegated black marble, stately interior staircases on both sides and other unusual features.
Real estate agent Sarah Orthober, who is marketing the house, readily acknowledges that it needs work — calling it an "amazing diamond in the rough" and an "incredible renovation opportunity." But the size, architecture and history of the house have been a big draw, and it's been a "curiosity" to neighbors and others who wanted to see the inside, Derek Manz, owner of Blue Velvet Estate Sales, which handled the sale, said. The contents — which included clocks, antique furniture, books, coin collections, artwork and cut glassware — reflected the lives of several generations of the Gatchel family, he said.
Completely rehabilitated, John Gatchel estimates the house could be worth about $2.4 million, based on his own experiences "flipping" houses in Charlotte, N.C. before moving back to the home when his father was ill about three years ago, he said.
Scottish-born Cowan also is receiving renewed attention in a new book out this year that pictures the house titled, "Colonel Andrew Cowan: Union Soldier, Louisville Citizen, Peacemaker," by local Civil War historian Bryan Bush of Fairdale. It tells how Cowan answered President Abraham Lincoln's call for volunteers for the Union Army and ultimately was present at Gen. Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox. After moving to Louisville, he entered the leather business, helped raise money for the parks system and served as president of the board of parks commissioners.
The home also is among those featured in the lushly illustrated 2011 coffee-table book, "Country Houses of Louisville 1899-1939," by Winfrey P. Blackburn Jr. and R. Scott Gill. "It was he (Cowan), who first publicly argued for the healthful and economic merits of a system of parks, and it was he who led the acquisition of lands for Cherokee and Shawnee parks," the books says. While some details are unknown, the home is thought to have been called Alloway House, derived from the Scottish Village in Ayrshire where the poet Robert Burns was born, and the estate "Ayrstead," incorporating part of the name of Ayrshire, Scotland, where Cowan was born in 1841. The estate was designed by Philadelphia architect Wilson Eyre Jr. and the Olmsted Brothers were the landscape architects.
Cherosen Hills, marked by entrance pillars at the end of Woodbourne Avenue, was developed on land that was once part of the Cowan estate, which once also included a home for his son, Gilbert Cowan. It was later destroyed by fire, and a stables and other structures that were modified and converted into single-family residences. After Cowan's death in 1919, his widow, Anna, sold the property to Richard S. Reynolds, co-founder of Reynolds Metals Co., and cousin of R. J. Reynolds of tobacco fame. Reynolds sold about four acres along Beargrass Creek to the city around 1921, enabling Cherokee Park to be connected to the new Seneca Park.
The Reynolds family then sold the house and estate to a developer in 1951.
The book, "Visual Art and the Urban Evolution of The New South," by Deborah C. Pollack, said Cowan invited Olmsted to Louisville to speak about park design at the private Pendennis Club for businessmen.
Cowan had advocated in 1887 for a system of three, large urban parks, and that influenced the city to hire the Olmsted firm in Brookline, Mass. in 1891 to design the Olmsted Parks system — featuring Cherokee, Iroquois and Shawnee parks as its showpieces — considered one of Louisville's biggest attractions today, according to the Encyclopedia of Louisville. The land for Cherokee was acquired in 1891
"It's always been very peaceful back here," Gatchel said.
Reporter Martha Elson can be reached at (502) 582-7061 and melson@courier-journal.com. Follow her on Twitter at @MarthaElson_cj.