Otto Hermann Kahn

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Otto Hermann Kahn : biography

February 21, 1867 – March 29, 1934
  • Roger Wolff Kahn, (b. October 19, 1907, Morristown, New Jersey – d. July 12, 1962, New York City);
    • Married January 26, 1931, Cold Spring Harbor, New York, Hannah Williams, a Broadway singer and dancer, divorced 1933;
    • Married April 7, 1933, Hempstead, LI, Edith May Nelson, a politician’s daughter (b. October 13, 1910, Waterville, Maine -d. September 1994, Glen Cove, Nassau, New York), two children

Burial place

Kahn was buried in the , in Laurel Hollow, Cold Spring Harbor, New York

Selected books and speeches by Kahn

  • Of Many Things; Being Reflections and Impressions on International Affairs, Domestic Topics and the Arts (a compilation of speeches and writings, 1926)
  • The Value of Art to the People (1924)
  • The Myth of American Imperialism (1924)
  • Reflections of a Financier – A Study of Economic and Other Problems (1921)
  • Two Years of Faulty Taxation (1920)
  • Our Economic and Other Problems: A Financier’s Point of View (1920)
  • Suggestions Concerning the Railroad Problem (1919)
  • Let Us Reason Together (1919)
  • Taxation: A Letter (1918)
  • Right Above Race (1918)
  • Poison Growth of Prussianism (1918)
  • The Menace of Paternalism (1918)
  • When the Tide Turned (1918)
  • Frenzied Liberty (1918)
  • The Common Cause: Britain’s Part in the Great War (1918)
  • Some Comments on War Taxation (1918)
  • The War and Business (1917)
  • Prussianized Germany. Americans of Foreign Descent and America’s Cause (1917)
  • Art and the People (1916)

Builder

Aerial View of Long Island estate As was typical for men of his stature, Kahn maintained both a New York City residence and a home in the country. Kahn’s original country home, a gift from his father-in-law, was in Morristown, New Jersey. Although a resident there for a number of years and a business associate of many of his neighbors, anti-semitism was still prevalent and Kahn was never accepted by Morristown society. Social rejection led him to move to Long Island and his New Jersey estate ultimately became home to Honeywell.Bleyer, Bill. , Newsday. Accessed May 12, 2008. "Otto Hermann Kahn was a rising figure in the banking industry and a generous patron of the arts. But to his wealthy neighbors in Morristown, N.J., in the early 1900s, Kahn had an overriding fault: He was Jewish."

By 1919, Kahn had assembled a 443 acre (1.79 km²) estate on Long Island, and had Oheka Castle (from Otto Hermann Kahn) built as its centerpiece. At , the 127 room structure was designed as the second largest private residence in the United States (after George Vanderbilt’s Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina) by Delano & Aldrich of New York City; its landscaping was designed by Olmstead Brothers, sons of Frederick Law Olmsted of Brookline, Massachusetts. The property featured a golf course, a working farm, a private airstrip, and numerous outbuildings.

Following Kahn’s death in 1934, the property was sold to the City of New York City for use as a retreat for sanitation workers and then later a government training school for merchant marine radio operators. In the late 1940s, an upscale housing development was constructed there and in 1948, the Eastern Military Academy (EMA) purchased the mansion and around it. (One of the former EMA cadets has written his memories going to school there.)Hall, Roger. , PineTree Press, 2007 By the time the school went bankrupt thirty years later, the gardens had been bulldozed, its rooms subdivided, and the paneled walls painted over. Following the departure of EMA, vandals repeatedly set fire to the building, but because Kahn had insisted on constructing a concrete, brick, and steel structure, the house survived. In 1984 a local developer, Gary Melius, purchased the estate for $1.5 million and began the largest private renovation project ever attempted in the United States."Next Role for Otto Kahn’s 126-Room Mansion", The New York Times, 4 January 1998, page RE7 Today, Oheka is used as a catering facility, hotel and conference center.