As their family grew, the Bowens wanted to establish a summer country retreat so that the family could escape the stifling heat and congestion of New York. Woodstock, Connecticut, with its rural rolling hills, cool ponds, and deep family history, was an ideal location. In 1845 Bowen commissioned Joseph C. Wells, the English-born architect who designed Bowen’s Plymouth Church in Brooklyn Heights, to design a summer home for the family. Joseph C. Wells designed a fantastic five-bedroom, 6,000-square-foot Gothic Revival cottage. The architectural style and plans of the house, as well as the grounds depicted in Wells’ original drawings, were in line with the theories and writings of Andrew Jackson Downing, a popular nineteenth-century American landscape architect. The Gothic Revival summer house, called Roseland Cottage by the family, was completed in the fall of 1846. At the time of construction, an adjacent carriage barn, complete with a private indoor bowling alley, and a detached woodshed were also built in the Gothic Revival style.

In 1850, shortly after the family started summering in Woodstock, the Bowens planted a colorful and nearly 3,000-square-foot boxwood parterre garden. The garden, as depicted in Joseph C. Wells’ drawings, sits prominently in front of the cottage and can be appreciated from the parlors, dining room, and second-floor bedrooms. According to Henry Bowen’s detailed orders the garden comprised 600 yards of boxwood hedge which surrounded twenty-one beds of more than thirty-five varieties of perennials and thousands of annuals. Roseland Cottage’s formal parterre has been an important feature of the house and landscape ever since.

The growing Bowen family returned to Woodstock and Roseland Cottage every summer in the mid-nineteenth century. In line with the Bowens’ Congregationalist values, their time at Roseland Cottage offered fresh air, wide open spaces, and the opportunity for clean and moral activities. The Bowen boys were deeply interested in sports and other energetic activities that reinforced ideas of masculinity and class in the late nineteenth century. They participated in newly popular sports such as polo, croquet, bowling, golf, and badminton, as well as more conventional outdoor pursuits like hunting and fishing.

Lucy Bowen and her three daughters engaged in quieter outdoor activities and other domestic and social pastimes. In a letter sent to a friend in June 1854, Lucy Bowen recounts her summers at Roseland Cottage: “Just one week since we arrived here and found every thing looking beautifully indeed – Now, we are all settled for the summer, and how rapidly it will pass…After breakfast, each day, sisters & myself read French for an hour & then in the afternoon, read History or something of that nature…The remainder of the day is spent in riding, eating, sleeping, sewing & thinking.”

In 1863 Lucy Bowen died due to complications related to the birth of her tenth child, Winthrop Earl Bowen.

During the 1870s Bowen expanded Roseland Cottage and its outbuildings to accommodate his growing family, the expansion of agricultural pursuits, and frequent social gatherings. In the 1860s and 1870s he purchased lots surrounding the cottage, expanding the property to approximately six acres. In 1870 the service ell of the house was expanded to include a full laundry room, butler’s pantry, scullery, and more bedrooms for paid live-in staff. Around the same time, an additional exterior privy was built and the adjacent barn was significantly expanded to accommodate livestock and additional staff housing. In the 1880s, after summering at Roseland Cottage for nearly forty years, the Bowens undertook a major redecoration of the house. Fireplace tiles were updated with the latest decorative styles, the parlor windows were refurbished with colored etched glass, new and vibrant carpets were laid, and impressive new wall coverings, called Lincrusta Walton after the inventor Fredrick Walton, were hung in all the principal entertaining rooms of the house.

While Roseland Cottage was primarily a family country retreat, during the second half of the nineteenth century the Bowens more frequently entertained distinguished guests and hosted large festivities at Roseland Cottage. The most notable of these festivities were Henry Bowen’s grand Fourth of July parties. Initiated in 1870 as a way to promote patriotism, Bowen’s Independence Day celebrations continued for twenty-five years. Hundreds were invited, and thousands gathered for the festivities that included food, elegant decorations, festive music, and stirring patriotic orations. Three United States presidents, Ulysses S. Grant, Benjamin Harrison, and Rutherford B. Hayes, and three past and future presidential candidates, John C. Fremont, James G. Blaine, and William McKinley, in addition to a long list of senators, congressman, governors, and other political, literary, and social luminaries, made their way to Woodstock to participate in these Fourth of July events. Eventually these events grew so large that Bowen purchased an approximately sixty-acre parcel in Woodstock and developed an elegant public park, replete with gilded fountains, decorative statuary, windmill, boat house, and private bungalows, in which to host his Fourth of July celebrations. The park, named Roseland Park, was first opened in 1876 and in accordance with Bowen’s will is still open to the public today.

The Bowens’ active social calendar was a result of Henry Bowen’s growing wealth and influence as a New York businessman and activist. After his dry goods business failed leading up to the Civil War, in large part due to his anti-slavery views and difficulties with Southern clients, Bowen pursued a number of other successful business ventures. He co-founded and served as a director of a profitable insurance company. He founded and later served as editor of a popular anti-slavery weekly newspaper, The Independent, and for a period of time, he was the appointed tax collector for the Third District of the State of New York. While not a politician himself, Bowen was actively engaged in politics. As an abolitionist and an early supporter of the Republican party, Bowen, and his newspaper, became important players in regional and even national politics as the party gained strength in the mid- and late nineteenth century.

After the deaths of Ned, Mary, and Franklin, Roseland Cottage was passed on to the third generation of Bowens in 1940. Roseland Cottage was deeded to Henry Holt, Mary Bowen Holt’s eldest son and Henry C. Bowen’s grandson. Henry Holt, however, never lived at Roseland Cottage. Rather, as provided in Mary Bowen Holt’s will, his two unmarried sisters, Constance and Sylvia Holt, were the primary residents of the grand pink cottage. Miss Constance and Sylvia lived at Roseland Cottage year-round and they carefully preserved the family home and its contents, making very few changes to the estate. After Sylvia died suddenly in 1945, Constance Holt remained at Roseland Cottage with a few trusted live-in staff. Like her grandfather, Constance was active in the community, most notably as a strong supporter of the Woodstock Academy, the area’s secondary school, and its students. At the age of eighty-nine, Constance passed away in 1968. She was the last Bowen family member to call Roseland Cottage home.

Since 1970 Historic New England has undertaken a number of interior and exterior restoration projects to preserve the structure and collections at Roseland Cottage. Projects in the 1970s and 1980s largely focused on repairing and rehabilitating structural and decorative elements, as well as making improvements to the drainage on the property, in an effort to stem future damage. During this same period Historic New England, with the help of Dr. Rudy Faveretti, professor of landscape architecture at the University of Connecticut, undertook a significant rehabilitation of the Bowen’s formal parterre garden. With meticulous field work and background research, the garden as seen today very closely reflects the garden laid out by Henry C. Bowen more than 150 years ago. In 1977 Roseland Cottage was nominated to the National Register of Historic Places.

In the 1990s Historic New England utilized state-of-the-art techniques and equipment to assist in the preservation of the Bowen family collection and enhance the museum experience. A computerized climate control system was installed and an extensive paint analysis was performed. In recent years, Historic New England has focused on telling a more complete story of the Bowen family and their time at Roseland Cottage. Several rooms in the house have been reinterpreted to more fully include the lives of the Bowen women. Portions of the service ell, and the history of the staff that worked for the Bowens, are now incorporated as part of the regular tour.

Roseland Cottage, designated a National Historic Landmark in 1992, remains one of the nation’s best preserved examples of Gothic Revival architecture. Roseland Cottage provides visitors a glimpse of the lifestyle and tastes of an upwardly mobile, ambitious, and close-knit family during the Victorian era.