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(Photograph by Curtis B. Johnson, C. B. Johnson Photography)
This stagecoach inn, post office, and general store reflects evolving tastes in Windsor County in the early nineteenth century. As built by Edward Simons, it was a large, brick, Federal central-hall house with elliptical arches that framed its door and windows. It was suited for use as an inn through the inclusion of a transverse second-floor hall that provided access to four rear bedrooms and a vaulted third-floor ballroom. The high gabled roof over the ballroom gave the inn a broad gable-front appearance that became regionally fashionable in the 1820s. The inherent Greek Revival character of the gable was emphasized by the subsequent addition of three stories of porches across the front of the inn. The first two are on chamfered posts and the third opens as a broad elliptical arch within a flush-boarded pediment. While the community takes its name from Simons, the inn is currently named for Frederick Rowell, who acquired it in 1910.