In our last edition of Gonechester, we touched upon the Warner Observatory, an astronomical observatory on East Avenue at Arnold Park which was funded in large part by Hulbert Harrington Warner. Warner, a quite wealthy man with great import in the Rochester business community, was initially a producer of safes, but later pivoted to a more lucrative trade–patent medicines.

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H. H. Warner

Warner first appears in the Rochester city directory in 1870, as a sales agent.

His industry was the manufacture of fire- and burglar-proof safes.

I’m not sure what “bottom end of book” they’re directing me to, I don’t see any Warner ads there but maybe I’m misunderstanding.

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Safe-Cure

In 1879, Warner purchased the production rights to “Dr. Craig’s Kidney Cure”, a concoction by Dr. Charles Craig that was meant as a cure-all but particularly targeted “Bright’s disease“, a term covering a number of afflictions of the kidneys. Craig created the formula himself when “given up to die” by his own physician while struggling with kidney disease.

The partnership between Warner and Craig would continue until 1882, when Dr. Craig would break away and sell his own patent cure. But the Warner Safe-Cure, Warner’s Log Cabin Cure, and dozens of different patent medicines purchased by H. H. Warner’s company had already made him millions, and would continue to do so for the next ten years.

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Building Warner’s Mansion

Between safes and Safe-Cure, Warner was absolutely flush with cash at this point. He had ownership of a wooded island in Alexandria Bay, with a large frame mansion that Warner planned to remake in stone.

It was time for Warner to construct a palatial home worthy of his business empire, and for this he chose the pretty corner of East Avenue and Goodman Street.

Let us take a quick aside and look at another building that was of importance to Warner–the great brick and iron palace of patent medicines he constructed on St. Paul Street.

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Warner’s Building on St. Paul

It is around this time, 1883, four years after the construction of his mansion that H. H. Warner would undertake the construction of a very large industrial and commercial building on St. Paul. His patent medicine empire burgeoning, the impressive new edifice would serve as a palatial place of potion-making, where all the different cures could be brewed, bottled, and shipped.

Warner’s empire is doing better than ever, and H. H. was flush with funds. The previous year he’d bought a steam yacht, The Siesta, built at Bristol, Rhode Island in 1882 by the Herreshof Manufacturing Co.

This would be the beating heart of Warner’s wealthy circulatory system. We’ll check back in on it later, after we’ve concluded with H. H. Warner’s stately East Avenue mansion.

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Warner’s Mansion

We return to H. H. Warner’s home on the corner of East Avenue and South Goodman Street.

The new manse appears for the first time on the 1888 plat map:

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Warner’s Downfall

All good things must come to an end. Warner’s fortunes began to turn. The Panic of 1893 severely undermined confidence in corporate stock, and intense devaluations meant Warner could no longer depend on selling stocks to fund extended operations. Creditors came a-calling, and when at least one refused to extend their credit, it served as the first domino in a catastrophic financial collapse.

Long story short, Warner’s ruined. His Rochester assets are sold off to repay his creditors, including the subject of this article: the H. H. Warner mansion on East and Goodman.

For a decent write-up on what Warner got up to after his disgraced egress from Rochester, check out “Bad Medicine Pt. 2: The Rise and Fall of H. H. Warner and the Warner Safe-Cure” at rochistory.wordpress.com, the ever-interesting blog of the Local History & Genealogy Division at the Rochester Public Library.

Here, at Gonechester, we are going to follow the former Warner house to its demise.

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Louis Griesheimer

In 1894, the Warner mansion was purchased by Louis Griesheimer, one of the founders of the Union Clothing Company. A German immigrant, he had previously lived in and worked as a clothier in Indianapolis and Chicago before coming to Rochester in 1882, whereupon he set up the very large clothing house of Union Clothing Co.

Pictured below, the Union Clothing and Tailoring Co. was housed within a tall building of brick and pressed stone, built by Patrick Cox at the corner of East Main and North Water Streets. This was one of the tallest buildings in Rochester at the time, and was aptly known as “The Tall Building” in Union Clothing advertisements and editorials for several years after its construction.

And you’re not gonna believe this: the architect? Once again, John. Rochester. Thomas. Was there a building this guy didn’t design? Yes, many, but still–this J. R. Thomas dude was prolific.

Charles Zoller, an early adopter of the autochrome process of color photography, took this photograph of the Warner Mansion at an uncertain date, probably during the 1910s when he was first experimenting with the process.:

Griesheimer would live in this house until his death on February 16th, 1926.

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Seneca Club

A Rochester social and athletic club, the Seneca Club, purchased the Warner mansion after Griesheimer’s death, with grand plans for a large central clubhouse on the corner.

The below Albert R. Stone photograph shows the Warner mansion with a sign saying “Seneca Club Property” in front of it. Another, smaller sign to the right identifies William T. Jackling as the contractor for the planned demolition.

The below shows plans for the Seneca Club building, which would have been an outrageous departure from East Avenue’s low profile and residential flavor–at the time. Nowadays, I suppose whatever goes and it would hardly stand out.

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The Wrecking

Demolition of the property got underway on September 28th, 1929; the previous day, September 27th, some 200 or so people toured through the doomed old house, taking in its grandeur and its dilapidation one final time.

The ornate craftsmanship of the interior was well-known, and many were concerned about its future when the demolition began.

The wrecking of the H. H. Warner mansion was carried out by William T. Jackling’s wrecking company, Jackling Wrecking Company.

Much pains were taken to salvage materials from the house. Below, one can see the cloth wallpapering being removed carefully by “textile expert” Herbert Otis.

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Clubhouse Cancelled

While the wrecking and building were ongoing, the Seneca Club moved into a temporary quarters at No. 31 Chestnut Street, which until so recently had been used by the Women’s City Club.

The Seneca Club would remain in these quarters until 1931; it seems, at this point, that their membership was rolled into the membership of the Rochester Athletic Club, which itself was refurbishing its building at No. 72 North Clinton Avenue to make a more modern and available space inclusive of women and children.

The Chestnut Street property would be refitted as a restaurant and hotel, the “Belvedere”, which opened in April of 1933.

As for the planned Seneca Club headquarters at East Avenue and Goodman, that didn’t happen; the corner was, for the time being, an empty corner.

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An Empty Corner

Now there was no fairy-tale mansion at the corner of East and Goodman. Nor was there a prominent athletic club towering over the street. There was simply a grassy, empty field, noted by one 1938 letter to the Times-Union as being bordered by a “green board fence”.

The article below makes reference to a painting by the well-known artist Edward Selmar Siebert which portrayed the H. H. Warner mansion. I tried to see if I could find any record of this painting, but I was unsuccessful as of publication time.

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The Municipal Museum

In 1940, Edward and Mathilda Morrell Bausch of No. 663 East Avenue, the property next door to the old Warner mansion, gave the home and its grounds as a gift to the Rochester Museum of Arts and Sciences, which was building its new facility. The Bausch gift included paying for the construction of the first building of the new museum campus, Bausch Hall.

The terms of the gift stipulated that the Bausch home would remain standing with the Bausches living out their remaining days in the home, reverting entirely to the museum’s property upon their deaths.

Mrs. Bausch would die July 14th of that year.

Below, 1941, the former site of the H. H. Warner mansion–apparently, long an eyesore–was beautified, in order to help preserve the “fading charm” of East Avenue.

Edward Bausch would die July 30th, 1944, leaving the house empty.

Of course, the Bausch home site now is the site of the Strasenburgh Planetarium; but if I’m going to keep discussing removals and additions to the Rochester Museum and the Planetarium, I’m going to require another entry, because this is getting extremely ungainly. Keep an eye out for that!

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Enduring Warner

Warner’s home and observatory may no longer exist, but his massive building on St. Paul Street yet remains. However, time and weather have taken their toll on the great brick-and-iron block, which has undergone a number of refurbishments.

In the 1950s, brothers Beryl and Gordon Present founded a “catalog showroom” business at No. 82; goods from an extensive sale were available for inspection by the customer at their St. Paul showroom, which could then be ordered directly.

In 1985, Warner Building Associates purchased the building from Present Co. and planned an extensive renovation into luxury offices.

This did not happen.

In 1987, the building and development company Mark IV purchased the H. H. Warner building and began an extensive rehabilitation of the property.

Numerous cast-iron architectural details which had been steadily corroding were replaced with replicas crafted by the studio of sculptor Scott Grove. Many of these were ornamental “caps” which covered joins in the metalwork.

Around 2009, the building would be refit once again, as luxury lofts, called Warner Lofts.

And so, it still stands, the last remaining worldly monument of a man’s rise to the top and precipitous slide back down. A century after bulldozers quietly smoothed the earth over Warner’s mansion and pet observatory, the H. H. Warner building yet looms over St. Paul Street. For how much longer? Who knows.

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