Schwab-Cook House (1870)

The Italianate-style double house at 22-24 Charter Oak Place in Hartford was erected c. 1869-1871 by Joseph Schwab (1826-1914), an insurance agent, who lived at No. 24. His father Jacob Schawb served in Napoleon’s army and survived the disastrous invasion of Russia, although he never recovered the full use of one of his legs that had been frozen during the Moscow Campaign. Jacob later emigrated to America and became a butcher in New York. His son Joseph Schawb was born in Gruenstadt, Germany. In his youth he worked as a manager for a mercantile house in Bühl, just south of Baden-Baden and during that time supported the German revolutionaries of 1848. He arrived in New York at the age of twenty-eight and worked for a German banking house in the city before joining a dry goods and millinery business in Hartford. When that partnership dissolved in 1877, he went into the insurance business, only retiring in 1912, two years before his death at the age of eighty-eight. In addition to building up a large fire and life insurance writing business, Schawb served as manager for New England of the Germania Life Insurance Company of New York. For forty years he also served as the first president of the Ladies’ Deboarh Society of Hartford, which raised funds to build the 1886 Deborah Chapel at Beth Israel Cemetery in Hartford, a building that was recently demolished. For thirty-seven years he also served on the city’s High School committee, being treasurer for eighteen terms. During that time another building which has since been demolished, the Gothic-style Hartford Public High School, was erected on Hopkins Street.