Former Isabella Heimath Home for the Aged

The Isabella Heimath Home for the Aged once stood on Amsterdam Avenue on the north side of W. 190th St. in the Fort George neighborhood of Manhattan. The home was established in Astoria, Queens in 1875, and provided shelter and support for widows and other elderly women. The home relocated to Amsterdam Ave. in 1889 and began accepting elderly men around that time as well. A hospital was also added to provide convalescent care. The organization's needs and capacity to serve outgrew that building's capacity of 132 residents, and as a result, they build a new seventeen story building at Audubon Avenue and W. 190th Street in 1965. This new facility was known as Isabella House, and in 1972, the fourteen-story Isabella Nursing Home opened nearby. The Amsterdam Avenue building was demolished and a parking garage now stands in its place.

When Isabella Uhl was dying in 1873, the young woman urged her parents to carry on her work of caring for elderly, aged women. Two years later, her stepfather and mother, Oswald and Anna Ottendorfer, opened the Isabella Home Society of Astoria in the Astoria section of Queens, New York. Anna came to the U.S. from Germany in 1836 as the wife of Jacques Uhl, a printer. Jacques died in 1852 and Anna married Oswald, an Austrian native, in 1859. Anna's first husband was editor of a German language newspaper, Staats-Zeitung; after his death, she took over operations of the paper. Her second husband was a clerk at the same newspaper and became editor in chief in 1858. Anna supported a number of charitable causes up to the time of her death in 1884 of heart disease. Her $5 million estate was left to her children and grandchildren.

When a larger facility was needed for the Isabella, Oswald Ottendorfer purchased land at W. 190th Street and Amsterdam and had the building constructed at a cost of nearly $560,000. The new building for the "Isabella Heimath" (heimath means home in German) was four stories tall with a central portion and two wings, fronting on Amsterdam Avenue. The central block contained offices, dining and reception rooms. There were long balconies on each side of the building. The grounds were landscaped with flowers and furnished with gazebos and shaded seats. Elderly men were admitted sometime after the move. The home expanded to care for chronic invalids and as a temporary home for convalescents. The charity aimed to "care for the aged and sick without regard to creed, sex, or nationality." The elderly residents were unable to support themselves and had no near relatives legally bound to care for them.

Isabella Heimath had 96 elderly residents in July 1892: nine married couples, 38 widowers or single men, and 40 widows or single women; minimum age for admittance was 60 for women and 65 for men. The south wing housed women while the north wing was for men; a floor in the central block was for married couples. Bedrooms had a window and contained two beds, a rug, washstand, and mirror. A room on each floor of the men's wing was a smoking room where men gathered to play cards or dominoes; on the women's wing, the group room was a sewing room. In the basement, men could do activities like carpentry, shoemaking, and tailoring. The ladies preserved donated fruits every year for the minister's use. The home was overseen by Superintendent J. William Meyer in the early 1890s. Edward Uhl, one of Isabella's brothers, served as president of the home by the turn of the twentieth century.

Oswald Ottendorfer left an estate worth about $3 million when he passed away in 1900 at age 74. His heirs were his Uhl stepchildren and stepgrandchildren; he provided for gifts to a number of museums and charities, including $100,000 to Isabella Heimath, and also left money to employees of his newspaper, his housekeeper, and a servant. Shortly before his death, Oswald left railroad bonds worth about $100,000 to Isabella Heimath. One of Isabella's sisters, Mrs. Anna Woerishoffer, was president of the home in 1911; C. von Boetticher was Superintendent.

By 1894, the Isabella Heimath Home for the Aged complex included a standalone brick building to the west, on the east side of Audubon Avenue. By 1913, the south part of the standalone building was a two-story brick carriage house with servants' quarters on the first floor; the north part was a one-story stone power plant with a smokestack to the north and a tunnel connecting to one of the main building's two hospital wings. The central part of the brick main building, between the two-story hospital wings, was called Memorial Hall and was one story tall. The east end of the building was the three-story Home for the Aged. The complex appeared relatively unchanged on 1935 and 1950 Sanborn maps, compared to the 1913 map. In 1969, after the new high-rise opened nearby, the original complex was demolished.

Anonymous. "Marriages and Deaths: Uhl." New York Herald (New York) March 21st 1873. 9-9.

Anonymous. "Old, Poor, Yet Happy: How the Inmates of the Isabella Home Spend their Time." Evening World (New York) July 18th 1892. Brooklyn Last ed, 2-2.

Anonymous. "A Woman of Many Charities." The Sun (New York) April 2nd 1884. 1-1.

Anonymous. "Will of O. Ottendorfer." New-York Tribune (New York) January 25th 1901. 1-1.

Anonymous. "Oswald Ottendorfer Dead: Romantic Career of the Editor of the 'Staats Zeitung'." The Times (Washington) December 16th 1900. 8-8.

Anonymous. "Double Gift to the Isabella." New-York Tribune (New York) January 26th 1901. 1-1.

Eldridge, S. New York Charities Directory. Edition 20th. New York, NY. Charity Organization Society of the City of New York, 1911.

Niers, Gert. Arrived at Last: An Immigrant Narrative. Blooomington, IN. Authorhouse, 2014.