The Rudolph Pretzinger House is a historic residence in southern

Dayton Dayton () is the sixth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Montgomery County. A small part of the city extends into Greene County. The 2020 U.S. census estimate put the city population at 137,644, while Greater Da ...

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

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. Constructed in the late nineteenth century for a prominent local pharmacist, it now abuts a city hospital, but it has been named a historic site.

History

Born in 1847, Rudolph Pretzinger emigrated to the United States with his parents at the age of seven and settled in Dayton. The death of his father in 1863 prompted him to undertake man's work, whereupon he earned a

pharmacy Pharmacy is the science and practice of discovering, producing, preparing, dispensing, reviewing and monitoring medications, aiming to ensure the safe, effective, and affordable use of medicines. It is a miscellaneous science as it links heal ...

degree and began a career that culminated in his ownership of a prominent downtown drugstore, a position in which he remained until his 1909 death.Drury, A.W. ''History of the City of Dayton and Montgomery County, Ohio''.

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and

: S.J. Clarke, 1909. Pretzinger's American-born younger brother Albert, one of Dayton's leading architects, designed the house, which was completed in 1889. The property was the focus of a

tax law Tax law or revenue law is an area of legal study in which public or sanctioned authorities, such as federal, state and municipal governments (as in the case of the US) use a body of rules and procedures (laws) to assess and collect taxes in a ...

suit in 1900: having paid his share of the cost of paving Wyoming Street along his property in 1894, Pretzinger refused to pay for the cost of a sidewalk on the property's Main Street side in 1896, based on his interpretation of an Ohio law forbidding repeated taxation of a property for street improvements within a five-year period.''Ohio State Reports''
Vol. 63: January Term, 1900.

Columbus Columbus is a Latinized version of the Italian surname "''Colombo''". It most commonly refers to: * Christopher Columbus (1451-1506), the Italian explorer * Columbus, Ohio, capital of the U.S. state of Ohio Columbus may also refer to: Places ...

, Ohio Supreme Court, 1900. While the Montgomery County court ruled in his favor, the case was reversed on appeal to the circuit court, but Pretzinger was ultimately victorious on appeal to the

Supreme Court A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts in most legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, apex court, and high (or final) court of appeal. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...

. Following Pretzinger's death, the property remained the home of his widow.

Architecture

Pretzinger's house is two and a half

stories Story or stories may refer to: Common uses * Story, a narrative (an account of imaginary or real people and events) ** Short story, a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting * Story (American English), or storey (British ...

tall, with access through an arched doorway in the center of the facade; although the southern side is longer than the facade, it is pierced by only four windows and no doorways, versus five and one in the facade. A

hip roof A hip roof, hip-roof or hipped roof, is a type of roof where all sides slope downwards to the walls, usually with a fairly gentle slope (although a tented roof by definition is a hipped roof with steeply pitched slopes rising to a peak). Thus, ...

covers the house, interrupted at points by small

gable A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of intersecting roof pitches. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system used, which reflects climate, material availability, and aesth ...

s with miniature

Palladian windows A Venetian window (also known as a Serlian window) is a large tripartite window which is a key element in Palladian architecture. Although Sebastiano Serlio (1475–1554) did not invent it, the window features largely in the work of the Italian a ...

. The northwestern corner of the house is a three-story tower with windows on each story, topped with a conical roof.

Limestone Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms whe ...

was used to construct the foundation and for other exterior elements, and the walls are brick and the roof asphalt. Together, these elements lend the house a Queen Anne appearance.

Historic site

In 1979, the Rudolph Pretzinger House was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

, qualifying because of its historically significant architecture. While the house remains at the intersection of Main and Apple Streets, as it was during Pretzinger's lifetime, the property no longer extends south to Wyoming; most of his land is now the site of Miami Valley Hospital.Directions to Miami Valley Hospital
Miami Valley Hospital, n.d. Accessed 2015-12-25. Two other National Register-listed locations lie within a few minutes' walk: the former Eagles Building to the north, and the exposition hall at the county fairgrounds across the street to the southwest.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pretzinger, Rudolph, House Houses completed in 1889 Houses in Dayton, Ohio National Register of Historic Places in Montgomery County, Ohio Queen Anne architecture in Ohio

History

Architecture

Historic site

See also

References