Anthony Waldman House - History Still Being Written

History Still Being Written

Waldman increased his property holdings throughout the 1860s and 1870s, building two other residences immediately to the south on the same lot—the double house at 449-51 Smith (1871; razed 2009) and the larger Italianate Revival home at 457 Smith (1873). In 1885 Waldman sold his home and two rental properties on Forbes Street (now Smith Avenue), and returned to Germany where he died in Edenkoben, Pfalz, Rheinbauein in 1887. A French-Canadian real estate investor named Thomas Manning purchased the stone house, and from there it went through several decades of renters. John Rafter, an Irish stone worker and later St. Paul policeman, his wife Margaret and their five children rented the stone house from approximately 1896 to 1917. Wellie Vierow, a German widow with her three adult children, rented the house beginning in 1917 and remained there throughout the 1920s. Ultimately the house was finally purchased by John and Francis Dreyling in 1947. John Dreyling died in 1988, and Francis lived alone in the house until 2008 when it was purchased for restoration by Tom and Ann Schroeder.