A Little piece of Paradise… College Hill, Ohio - SELFCRAFT

Great-granddaughter, Mary Buente McMahan, remembers hearing the story of Louis Buente ‘losinghis shirt’ in some kind of dealings with the builder and speculator, Truman B. Handy. Supposedly, Louiswas never paid for the stone work done on the elaborate front entrance of the Handy Opera House in1866. Pike’s Opera House burnt to the ground earlier that year. The fire, being one of Cincinnati’s largestconflagrations, could be seen 42 miles away in Lebanon. The public tried to talk Pike into rebuilding.Handy decided to take on the task. Newspaper articles tell of Samuel Pike secretly rebuilding what thepublic thought to be another Opera House at the same time as Handy. Pike’s new building surprised all. Itwas built to look like the old Opera House but the inside was intended for use as a Merchant’s Exchange.By then the public had withdrawn its support for ‘Handy’s Folly’ thinking that there would be no need fortwo Opera Houses. The Handy building was not completed due to lack of sponsorship and funds. In 1868the Handy Opera House was purchased by the Cincinnati Public Library at a foreclosure sale for $83,000.The building served as the main library for 85 years. It will probably never be known what actuallyhappened with any of the business deals between Buente and Handy. Handy was also a speculator‘locking up almost all the ribs and lard in the country in 1880 and then again tying up all the wheat inChicago in 1881.’ Handy’s obituary states that he was brilliant enough to be 2 to 3 times over amillionaire and 2 to 3 times over an ex-millionaire, being the latter when he died. Handy seems to havebeen continually running out of funds. Did he ever pay his sub-contractors? Due to this experience theBuente’s only took on smaller jobs staying away from all large, possibly fatal, business deals.Another family story tells of Louis Buente supplying the cut stone for the Eden Park ‘MasonryBridge’ built in 1873. The materials used for building the bridge are described by the architect JamesMcLaughlin. 7 In his specifications it states that ‘All the stone work...to be dressed smooth with the chiselbut not rubbed. The stones to be of the largest size and the work to be of the massive and substantialcharacter...’ A street car double decker structure made of ornamental iron was later added to the top deckof the bridge in 1877. A drawing of the ‘Design for the Bridge in Eden Park’ dated 1877 was found in thefiles of Louis Buente III in 1970 which gives substance to this story. Truman B. Handy was listed asserving as Park Commissioner for several years and being one of three park commissioners in the year1870.Sybilla, wife of Louis, died after giving birth in 1873. Etched in stone on the Buente familymonument in the Vine Street Cemetery are Sybilla’s words to her husband - ‘Dear Husband, Take care ofmy little children, do as I would and they will respect you.’ With three children being under the age often, Louis Buente married Theresa Mueller, a young woman having recently arrived in the United Statesfrom Germany. Louis and Theresa had four children - John, Edward, Nellie and Matilda. The cemeteryrecords list John Buente as deceased due to an accident at the age of three years, nine months.When Louis Buente died in 1884, his son Louis II, then twenty years of age, took charge of theSpring Grove Avenue business. No documentation of the handing over of the business is to be found.Louis married Catherine Ann Nofer on 25 September 1890. They had four children, two sons -William and Louis, and two daughters - Sybil and Myrtle.Louis moved the stone yard, family residence, his step-mother, half-brother and half-sisters toCumminsville in 1893, the year that Louis III was born. The stone yard deed states that he bought landbetween Spring Grove and Colerain Avenues, with the property bordering the Mill Creek. The businessname was then changed to that of the Phoenix Buente Stone Yard. The reason for this name change is notknown. One idea is that the Phoenix rising from the ashes might have symbolized that the stone yard wasonce again on the road to financial stability. Several photos of the floods of 1933 and 1937 show the stoneyard underwater. The name Phoenix is displayed on the building during the flood of 1932 but hasdisappeared by the 1937 flood. The Cincinnati City Directory listed the stone yard as that of Louis C.Buente and Son in 1927.7 Specification and Description of Work and Material Required for the Entrance Archway to Eden Park, James McLaughlin,Cincinnati Historical Society library.133