Macon Magazine

october/noveMber 2013 Macon Magazine i 41 he became a partner in a business called Cook and Cowles, selling coal, iron and cotton gins. He met and married a Milledgeville girl, Sarah Caroline Williams, whose father had long been state treasurer. In 1829 he made plans to relocate and take his bride to the 6-year-old town of Macon. He bought a lot on prestigious Walnut Street and engaged master- builder Elam Alexander to build a story-and-a-half cottage in the newly fashionable Greek revival style. How much influence the young entrepreneur had on his builder in the design for the house is not recorded, but some of his contemporaries much later indicated that it was Cowles who introduced Alexander to the new style. What they created has been acknowledged to be one of the finest Greek revival cottages in the country, one that has often been copied in Macon and elsewhere. It is a construction of stucco over brick, featuring a portico with four Ionic columns, a floor plan of four large rooms flanking a center hall broken by an arch, and features finely carved moldings, doors and mantels. To save it from demolition in 1946, the cottage was carefully taken apart and painstakingly reassembled on Rivoli by Alfred Sams. After moving into the cottage early in 1830, Cowles wasted no time in making his mark on his newly adopted hometown. Cook and Cowles began selling general merchandise including hides, leather and Griswold cotton gins. In December 1830 Cowles was one of 13 investors who created Macon's first fire insurance company. By 1835 Cowles had been elected alderman for the city and, when the mayor led a militia group to Florida to help quell an Indian uprising, Cowles served as interim mayor. He also was one of the founders of the Macon Lyceum and Library Society. His obituary would declare he "was connected with every worthwhile enterprise" in the young town. He was one of the commission of five who selected the site for Rose Hill Cemetery. The Cowleses had moved to Macon with their infant daughter, Ruth Caroline. In the ensuing four years they were blessed with three sons: Henry William in 1831, Jerry Sedgwick in 1832 and William Cook in 1834. With their family and their fortune growing, the Cowleses made plans for a much larger and more impressive house. In 1835 Jerry Cowles purchased four acres atop the hill overlooking the town and in 1836 the hillside itself, which was known as "the peach orchard." He and his friend and colleague Alexander began planning the house that would become a Macon landmark and an architectural masterpiece. As his friend Judge Clark would later write, Cowles was "the only man who at the time had the means and enterprise to build 'the palace on the hill'," as the house would come to be called by people in Macon. And this before he was 35 years old. The house that crowned what quickly became known as Cowles' Hill was Greek Revival, featuring a colonnade of 18 double-story Roman Doric columns. It was constructed of brick covered in stucco and had a plan of four rooms on each floor flanking a central hall. A winding stair rose three floors to a small dome with a glass skylight. Marble mantels, ceiling medallions and mouldings were restrained rather than elaborate. Sarah oversaw planting of the surrounding gardens. Construction took four years, and the Cowleses moved into their new home in 1840. But if his two lasting personal memorials are his houses, his two most significant contributions to Macon were its railroads and the world's first women's college. By the time his new home was ready Cowles had become on important figure in the community. At that time, and for many years thereafter, he was most identified in the public's mind with one enterprise - railroads. Macon had been a river town and a cotton distribution center since its founding in 1823. Since 1829 it had been served by steamboats. Cowles was one of a group of visionaries who believed railroads would replace water transport, and Macon was in a position to become the hub of a vast railroad network. He lived to see his vision accomplished and had the satisfaction of knowing that he deserved credit for making it happen. In1833 Cowles and Alexander traveled to the state legislature in Milledgeville to press for a charter for a Macon-Savannah line. They succeeded despite heavy lobbying by rival towns seeking lines from Augusta to Eatonton The mansion built for Jerry Cowles by Elam Alexander and completed in 1840 is now owned by Mercer University and called Woodruff House. Its pure Greek Revival style was altered in the 1850s by changes to its front door and the addition of flanking wings.

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