Ohio In The 1800s: Otto’s Greenhouse
For many years, a former greenhouse sat crumbling and rotting away in Huron, Ohio. An old smokestack towered over the remains of what was once Otto’s Greenhouse. A blanket of greenery sprawled across glass roofs, weaving in and out through broken panes. An area once filled with the hurried footsteps of work, now empty and quiet.
The Otto family owned and operated this greenhouse for many years producing a variety of crops such as cucumbers, flowers and of course tomatoes; tomatoes were at the heart of their business.
Otto’s Greenhouse dates back to the 1800s when the family business was first started as just a farm by Jacob H. Otto’s parents, Jacob and Katherine. The farm was then passed down in the family until a greenhouse was eventually built and opened for operations in the early 1900s. Otto’s Greenhouse would then be passed down generation after generation, until being abandoned in the late 1990s due to larger companies taking over the industry. As larger companies continued to grow, it left little room for smaller family-owned farms to survive in business. Things became even more difficult for the Otto family to stay afloat when they had attempted to pump in water from Lake Erie to water their plants. Deciding to do all the work themselves, they had made the mistake of installing a valve backwards. When the water was turned on, lake water had backed up into people’s homes for miles around. Following this incident, the Otto’s had gone bankrupt.
Jacob H. Otto, son of Jacob and Katherine E. Ries Otto, was born in 1879. He would grow to be the man who would eventually run Otto’s Greenhouse alongside his son, Edward in the 1900s. This is when the greenhouse and farm would see some major growth.
Somewhere between 1909 and 1912, Jacob would marry Caroline Steiger Otto, and they would soon have 2 children together – Edward F. Otto (born September 6, 1912), and Charles J. Otto (born 1914). Altogether, they had three children, as Caroline had already had a daughter, Mary Alice Burnham.
Edward graduated from Berlin Heights High School in 1930, and held the state record for the mile run he had set in 1929 at the Ohio State track meet. After graduating, he would run the farm with his father. It was around this time that Otto’s Greenhouse had become a major supplier of tomatoes, among some other vegetables, not only locally, but across parts of the US.
Things were moving well for the farm. It wasn’t long before Edward would marry Lucille (Green) Otto. Edward and Lucille would then have a son named Ray, who was born on March 8, 1942. Unfortunately Edward’s father, Jacob, had passed before this in 1941 at the age of 62. Ray lived in Berlin Township his entire life. After graduating from Berlin Heights High School, he would go on to help run the family business, becoming the third generation to help operate the greenhouse.
Ray was a busy man away from the family business, as he was also quite active in the community. He served on the Erie County Health Board for 18 years, and the fair board for six. He also served on the Berlin Township Fire Department and was a 4-H Leader of the Shinrock Live Wires. If all of that was not enough to fill time, he also served as president of the Ohio Greenhouse Association, along with serving on the Board of Directors of the Cleveland Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association for 15 years. After a long, busy life, Ray passed away on December 27, 2017 at the age of 75. His father, Edward had passed at the age of 88 only 16 years prior on July 31, 2001.
It has been said that in the early days of the greenhouse, Ed and his brother Charles did not get along operating the business together, and had a falling out. Charles left and started his own greenhouse, which has also since been demolished. Charles and his son Gerald had mostly focused on growing mums, snapdragons and cucumbers. Both businesses started to lose momentum around the same time before they were both finally shut down. Jacob T Otto, grandson to Ray Otto (born 12/25/1991) continues the family business, operating a corn and soybean farm in Berlin Heights, Ohio.
Some people have been able to find vintage tomato boxes floating around on Etsy dating back to the 1960s. The boxes read “Otto’s Green House Tomatoes.”
The greenhouse was demolished in 2017, leaving only open fields and a smoke stack where it all once stood.
Thank you for checking out Architectural Afterlife! If you enjoyed this post, or any others on this blog, be sure to check out “Forgotten Dreams”
“Forgotten Dreams” is a 4-part book series about abandoned places set to release in 2020. The series will share stories and photos of abandoned places, in a similar way that I share them with you on this blog. Of course, having a great quality physical book is better than staring at a screen and sifting through a blog all day. “Forgotten Dreams” is a book containing my best and personal favorite photos that I’ve taken of some of the most incredible or interesting abandoned or historic locations I’ve ever visited, shot and documented.
Each purchase of a book helps me to keep this blog up and running, and helps me to keep it ad-free.
I’m also currently working on a series of state-specific books. So far the series includes “Ohio’s Forgotten History” and “Pennsylvania’s Forgotten History”
Thank you so much for your support!
You can also check out other abandoned places in Ohio by clicking HERE
