How Kola House

Overview

How Kola House
Colonial Revival Style
Built in 1890 as the club house of the Pavonia Yacht Club. Forty boats docked in the bay below. The building was remodeled in 1905 as a private residence with 2 1/2 stories. A wrap around two-story porch overlooks the steep bank and Sandy Hook Bay. It has two-story Tuscan order columns and a balustrade with a milled railing. A circular, one-story porch extension with conical roof is on the east end. The exterior walls are white clapboard on the first floor, natural wood shingles on the second, and white siding above that. A dentil cornice circumscribes the house. The roof has gables and hips, and a tower section has dentil trim and a pyramidal roof. Windows are in a five bay symmetrical pattern. There are three chimneys. The garden wall is made of local fieldstone known as "peanut stone" after the chunky pebbles embedded in it.

House name: The landowner in 1889 was Samuel Frost whose family farm was on Garrett Hill in nearby Middletown. An early occupant was his brother, Dan Frost, and "Indian trader" with business in New York City. He named the house "How-Kola" meaning "welcome, friend" in the Lakota dialect of the Sioux language--and so inscribed plaques set into stone gateposts on Ocean Boulevard. Frost even installed a totem pole in the yard.

Atlantic Highlands Green Map
updated 02/2010 by Trevor Brick