Completed in 1868 by architect Henry Austin, the Betts House — also known as the John M. Davies House or Davies Mansion — is a 21,000-square-foot mansion that was the largest single-family home in New Haven when it rose here. When it rose here it was the largest single-family home in New Haven. In 1947 it was refitted as the home of the new Culinary Institute of America, and later, after it was sold to Yale in 1972, it fell into disuse for four decades after being acquired by the university.
Preservationists and students considered it the best example of Second French Empire Revival architecture in the city and stopped the university from demolishing it in the 1990s. The house was extensively renovated in 2002 and is now home to the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. You can still feel the sweep of Prospect Hill’s early growth here: the neighborhood’s earliest residences were built in the 1860s, when Oliver Winchester, Othneil Marsh, and John M. Davies all built mansions on the same block north of Edwards Street, Winchester having founded the Winchester Repeating Arms Company just down the hill.
Picture those Prospect Hill mansions rising together in the 1860s, this one still marking the block just north of Edwards Street.