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The Owl Shop, New Haven

MAKING ONE OF my occasional forays into the neighboring state of Connecticut yesterday afternoon I was introduced to a little corner of paradise. A friend and I were going to partake in an evening with a club at Yale of which he was formerly president. As a mark of his completed tenure in the office he desired to purchase a pipe to donate to said organization, which brought us to an institution with which I was previously unacquainted.

Just an hour and half up the coast from home, the Owl Shop on College Street in New Haven is a priceless gem. Where else, especially in these days of increasingly totalitarian smoking laws with Big Brother telling Joe Bloggs what he may or may not do, can a man sit in a comfortable armchair and enjoy a smoke and a tall glass of ale?

“It wasn’t too long ago,” said tobacconist Joe Lentine behind the counter, “the Fifties and Sixties really, when most Yale students smoked pipes. At least half, if not more.” If anything, my friends, is proof that the march of progress is a myth than surely it is that.

“People even smoked in the library,” Mr. Lentine added. “With those tall ceilings, who cared?” I can imagine several librarians, university administrators (that abominable caste), and fire marshals being driven to apoplexy by the very thought these days.

The Owl has a history, of course. It was first founded as a bookstore by one Joseph St. John, a Greek immigrant, on Wall Street in New York, but tobacco soon proved to be a more lucrative product. 1937 saw the opening of the second Owl Shop on College Street in New Haven, just a block from Phelps Gate and New Haven Green, the city’s colonial town common. After expanding to five stores, it was decided in 1951 to consolidate everything at the New Haven shop. During the heyday of the neighboring Shubert Theatre, stage stars such as Alec Guiness, Rex Harrison, and Helen Hayes frequented the shop.

The shop passed from the founding St. John family to the Greenbergs in 1998, who controversially sold off the pipes which had been gifted by graduating classes of Yale to the university president until 1970, and adding the café section, allowing the smoking brethren to enjoy beer, ale, drams of scotch, and other assorted beveraged. Some cried foul, but most accomodated the change, especially since the long-standing and knowledgeable employees remained.

The shop remains today as a New Haven institution and one of the most famous tobacconists in the world. On Thursdays and Fridays it remains open until ten in the evening for the enjoyment of smoke devotées, smoking and sipping their cares away. Well worth a visit if one ever finds oneself in the Elm City.

Furthermore:
Owl Shop faces changes
(Yale Daily News, March 31, 1999)
City of Shopkeepers
(Light & Truth, Survival Guide 2002)

Published at 2:06 pm on Saturday 3 September 2005. Categories: History.
Comments

Oh! You know, I was there last night with a couple of friends and a couple of glasses of Grenache. Ended up getting in this conversation about how cigar wrappers are only grown in certain places: Cuba, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Brazil, Mexico, and Connecticut. Oh, how I love the Nutmeg State! It is full of surprises.

— Kathleen M. 22 May 2009 4:40 pm

There’s an Owl Shop in Worcester MA as well. No ales, only tobacco. Was opened in 1947 and has remained in the same family, the fellow who opened it still works behind the counter most days and is full of excellent information about pipes. Blends wonderful tobaccos. It is my favorite weekly stop.

— Jack 5 Jan 2010 4:44 pm
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