The Lost Louis Ohlman House - 130 East 83rd Street

 

When this photograph was taken around 1898, the picturesque house was squashed between an apartment building and grocery store.  from the collection of the New-York Historical Society

When the Civil War erupted, the vast countryside east of Central Park was sparsely developed.  And yet, the extension of the New York and Harlem Railroad along Fourth Avenue (later Park Avenue) in the 1830s, which included a station at 86th Street, sparked interest in the district.  A hamlet, Yorkville, grew up east of Third Avenue.

Just after the war, a two-and-a-half story and basement was erected at 130 East 83rd Street, just east of Lexington Avenue.  About a decade before real development would swamp the neighborhood, the frame Italianate-style house reflected its rural setting.  Three bays wide and sitting back from the property line behind a prim wooden fence, its windows wore molded lintels.  The unusual porch above the wooden stoop was supported by wooden columns and its roof was in the shape of a hood.  What made the modest house stand out was its jig-sawed decorations--sometimes known as gingerbread.  Delicate, lacy forms like icicles hung from the porch roof and the eaves.  They were nearly copied in reverse by ornaments that pointed upward.

The house seems to have been rented.  Living here by 1873 was Anna M. Brewster, the widow of Stephen.  She was followed by Emma S. McLean, another widow, around 1876.  She took in a boarder, Henry I. Cooper, who worked as a clerk.  Emma left in 1878 and an advertisement in The New York Herald on June 2 read: "Furnished House to Let--$40 per month."  The rent would translate to about $1,400 in 2026.

By the early 1880s, English-born contractor Joseph Richardson owned large amounts of property in the neighborhood, including 130 East 83rd Street.  His own house was just a block away.  The multi-millionaire leased East 83rd Street house to the Louis Ohlman family in 1886.  

Louis Ohlman was a real estate agent and he operated his business from 130 East 83rd Street.  He and his wife had an adult son, Joseph H.  The family had a live-in servant, Maggie, who had been with them since 1875.  

Concerned about Joseph's future, Mrs. Ohlman would sometimes walk around the block to her landlord's house.  She would later testify, "I asked him to try and get my son a position."  Richardson, she said, would repeatedly told her "to let my son alone, and that he thought he would get along nicely."

Joseph Richardson had erected his bizarre home at the northwest corner of 82nd Street and Lexington Street in 1882.  It was one of the most famous residences in New York--not because of its grandeur, but because it was 102 feet long and only five feet wide.  It was known popularly as The Spite House because the eccentric Richardson erected it to get revenge on the developers who would not meet his price for the narrow strip.

Mrs. Ohlman's relationship with her cantankerous landlord was apparently very friendly.  According to her court testimony later, she would visit him and his wife, Emma, and occasionally Richardson would present small gifts, like passes to an afternoon outing.

Sometimes, Mrs. Ohlman's visits were more businesslike.  When Richardson began excavation for the large apartment building next door to 130 East 83rd Street, she worried.  Mrs. Ohlman testified, "in the first week in April [1897] I was very much troubled...and they dug so far down I was afraid my house would tip over, and I used to go in quite often and converse about that matter with Mr. Richardson."  Each time, Richardson assured her "that my house was on built on rocks, and he thought there was no danger."

And when the construction workers began throwing rocks and debris into the Ohlman's front yard, breaking some of the rose bushes, Mrs. Ohlman marched over to the Richardson house to complain.  "He said it was no use of taking any notice of those Italians, and that I should by no means speak to them, because they would only give me abusive language," she recounted.

When Richardson became ill in 1897, according to her court testimony, Mrs. Ohlman visited regularly, bringing fresh-cut flowers from her garden and often sitting with him for nearly half and hour.  The eccentric millionaire died on June 8, 1897, and Emma Richardson inherited 130 East 83rd Street.

In the meantime, Richardson had been correct regarding Joseph Ohlman.  He went into the sign business and, like his father, ran it from the East 83rd Street house.

Trow's Business Directory 1898 (copyright expired)

Joseph Ohlman died at the age of 30 on December 14, 1899.  Emma Richardson sold East 83rd Street shortly afterward to lawyer William T. Washburn, who lived at 52 East 79th Street.  

Washburn leased the property to Catherine and William H. Walsh, who operated it as a boarding house.  Among the conditions of the lease was that Washburn's mother-in-law, Mary Doughty, could occupy rooms on the second floor.  (Mary's husband had died in 1879.)  According to Washburn, "Mrs. Doughty lived in the Eighty-third street house because she was independent."

Catherine Walsh's other boarders were working class, many of them with Irish surnames.  Among their professions in 1904  and 1905 were carpenter and dressmaker.

Although Joseph Richardson had installed lighting gas in the house years earlier, Mary Doughty was afraid of using it.  Her son-in-law said that she, "read a great deal, but refused to have gas in her room, preferring the old fashioned oil lamp."  

At around 11:00 on the night of November 28, 1909, Catherine Walsh smelled smoke and she traced it to the second floor and Mary Doughty's door.  The New York Herald reported that she and other boarders "beat at the door in vain."  In the meantime, a policeman saw smoke pouring from a window, rushed in and broke in the door.  He smothered the flame with a blanket but it was too late for the 75-year-old Mary.

The New York Sun said, "On the floor was a broken kerosene lamp.  The theory was that while trying to move the lamp from a table to a bureau, Mrs. Doughty had dropped it and her dress got on fire."

William and Catherine Walsh had a daughter, Beatrice, who became an actress in 1901.   She appeared in The Follies and in the 1907 production of The Social Whirl at the Majestic Theatre on Columbus Circle.  Beatrice Walsh died in the 83rd Street house in December 1913.

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

The end of the line for the exquisitely charming wooden house came in 1923 when it and the wooden store building on the corner were demolished and replaced by a two-story brick store-and-office building designed by Thomas Paterson, Jr., which survives.