Cowen Memories Part 1 - Cowen as of 1911, 1942, and the 1980s.

Bird's Eye View of Cowen, WV, c. 1912

Cowen, West Virginia is my hometown, as far as towns close to my home are concerned.  My parent's house is somewhere between Cowen and Camden-on-Gauley, but by the early 1980s, Cowen had the closest grocery store, post office, and elementary school.  Historically speaking, Cowen was incorporated before Camden-on-Gauley. 

This is what Mr. R. L. Thompson had to write about Cowen in his book 'Webster County:  history [and] folklore, from the earliest times to the Present,' 1942:

"COWEN, some times called "The Savannah of the Mountains" is the principal town in Glade district.  It is located on a plateau at an altitude of 2,244 feet above sea level.  Although in the vicinity were many pioneer settlers, the town was not established until the building of the railroad in 1898, and incorporated in 1899.  The municipality was named for John F. Cowen, a director and one of the larger stockholders in the West Virginia Railway Company.  Several lumber mills had offices in the town.  The Glade district high school was established and located there in 1908, and the building erected a short time later.  W. W. Trent was the first principal.  The first graduating exercises were held in 1911, when a class of three was graduated.  [...]  Located on a branch of the B & O Railroad and State Route 15, the town was for years the principal shipping point for a large territory, including Webster Springs.  With the removal of the railroad shops from Gassaway and Weston to Cowen in 1942 and the expected development of rich coal deposits in the vicinity, the citizens looked forward to an era of expansion and prosperity for the town and surrounding territory."

 Of course, in 2010, Cowen is much changed, and prosperity is subjective.  In the above picture, I can only recognize two buildings that are still wholly standing.  On the far right is the Methodist Church on what is called 1st Street, and toward the middle of the photo is the little building in the intersection of Cowen.  This little building, I have been told, was at one time a watch and shoe repair shop.  I remember it being a flower shop at one time in my child hood.  It is now a home.  Beside it is/was a house now in extreme disrepair, the Clark house, which looks down Webster Road.  The Clark house was built later on, but beside this house, and visible in the photo is another building that is now in ruins still.  If I remember correctly, it is owned by a Mr. Blyler (?) and rests next to the Cowen #105 Rebekah Lodge/Odd Fellows building and newer post office.  Then again, Cowen has burnt before, buildings torn down, and I can only remember what existed from the early 1980s on.  Yes, I am of the 'younger generation,' but the steady changes, mostly decline, have been noticed in my generation.

For example, the building that had once been Cowen Grade School still stands.  See below...

Gauley Summit Sanitorium, later Cowen Hospital, then a girl's dorm, Cowen Grade School, Brinson's Furniture, and now a private residence.

My father attended Cowen Grade school, but the above picture compared to what the grade school looked like...it is a bit difficult to see the resemblance.  By the time my father was in grade school in the 1950s and 1960s, the embellishments on the building were gone and a new section was built in block on the left hand side.  Then, by the time I knew the building as Brinson's Furniture, there were no trees out front and no porch.  In fact, the central section of the building had been totally changed.

 

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Even now, the above picture is not current.  The building is being quasi-restored by a private owner.  The are new windows in the second story, but these windows are nothing like the originals...

My memory of this building is strong.  I dream of this building often.  As a child, "Red" and Kitty Brinson had furniture in this building, and the office was on the backside where the driveway ascends just below the bank on Arthur Street just above, near Rose Street.  I write 'street' but it is more like narrow little barely paved roads on the hillsides...  The angle of the above photo comes from the sidewalk along Howard Farm Road (called Old Birch River Road by Google Maps), across the street from Mrs. Keyser's house on the corner (now owned by a new family).

The building, as I remember it, was not heated except for the office and, naturally, the furnace room, which used coal.  The furnace room frightened me as a child.  It was in the basement, it was dark, and the coal smoke that permeated everything was hard on the lungs.  The basement was closed for the most part, except for the old cafeteria space, which was in the basement of the block addition (in above picture, seen on the far left).  This space was uneven, meaning that there was a sloped floor toward the outside wall.  There was an old piano with a roller, but no roll.  The piano was mournfully out of tune, dusty, and sporting many broken keys.  That did not stop my sister and I from trying to play "Heart and Soul."

The classrooms were filled with furniture, plastic covered mattresses and fine cherry chests of drawers.  My sister and I would run through these rooms, playing hide and seek, our breath coming out in steam during the colder months.  We found the old light fixtures eerie, as well as the true slate chalk boards still on the walls.  We thought the washrooms were frightening, and the stale odor of chalk dust disturbing.  It was the fact that building was old and the floors creaked ominously that we loved and feared the building.  The old grade school building was fodder for strange dreams.

I hope that the new owner keeps this old monster of a building from falling in on itself.  It is over one hundred years old, but I doubt many people on Cowen think about that fact often, if at all.  Ah well, sadly, that is the way of things, I suppose...