William T. Rowe Apartments

About William T. Rowe Apartments

The Trinity Management motto, “Enhancing Communities, Changing Lives,” certainly applies to The William T. Rowe apartment building in downtown New Haven. Located in the Yale-New Haven Hospital area, the nine-story building is sometimes called the new Rowe by people who once called the old Rowe their home. That one was bad; this one is terrific.

There are 104 one- and two-bedroom apartments, of which 78 are affordable for people earning up to 60 percent of area median income and 26 are market rate. There are laundry rooms on each floor. Pets are welcome; dogs weighing up to 20 pounds are allowed. This is a smoke-free community. There are about 2000 square feet of community and support space on the first floor as well as approximately 2000 square feet of retail space. There is off-street parking for 88 cars.

“’It’s beautiful,’ 76-year-old Margaret Hopkins, who lived in the old Rowe for 34 years, said—a refrain repeated over and over again by tenants describing their new apartments,” wrote Laurel Leff in the Sept. 8, 2011 edition of the New Haven Independent.

The old building had deteriorated after 37 years doing service as public housing for many elderly and disabled people, so much so that it couldn’t be rehabilitated. In fact, the move to the new building, located adjacent to the old, was hastened by a blown transformer on Sept. 1, with some tenants hustling out in just one day after all the lights went out. The old Rowe was then demolished.

“The New Rowe represents a new approach to public housing in the neighborhood,” wrote the reporter for the New Haven Independent.

Many people would prefer to walk or to take public transportation to the center of New Haven a short distance away, which offers cultural attractions, culinary treats and shopping delights. There is a bus stop at the corner, making it an easy trip. Among the one-of-a-kind pleasures is a burger at Louis’ Lunch, which claims to be the home of the first hamburger sandwich in the U.S. Or, there is the Peabody Museum, which showcases more than 300 million years of natural history. One could take in a show at the Shubert Theater, perhaps, or simply people watch in this vivid and lively capital city of Connecticut.  New Haven is not the capital of CT.  It is, however, one of the greatest small cities in America.