Grandview Heights Moment in Time
This residential home at 1101 Broadview Ave. in Grandview Heights was designed in 1906 for Claude K. Seibert and his wife, Martha (Wygant).
The couple founded the Fifth Avenue Floral Company, which had extensive greenhouses on Fifth Avenue and a retail shop on East Broad Street. The company became one of the most successful florist businesses in Columbus, selling about $100,000 worth of flowers annually by 1923. The Seiberts lived in the home until 1927 when they moved to King Avenue near the Ohio State University campus.
The Dutch Colonial home, designed by Columbus architects Richard Dawson and Harry Holbrook, was featured in a 1908 Dispatch article that described it as “built on a knoll commanding a fine view of Arlington and the surrounding territory. It is equipped with its own pumping plant and is finished in mahogany, quartered oak, and white enamel with large open air sleeping rooms.”
It had multiple fireplaces, with locally quarried limestone hearths, exposed wood cross beams and stair posts and a large window seat in the first-floor turret. The Seiberts had the builder install an imported German nine-panel, stained glass window along the main staircase, which was called “The Enchanted Wood.”
Born near Chillicothe, Claude Seibert and his family moved to Columbus in 1882. He eventually attended Capital City Commercial College on South High Street, taking a position as an accountant with the Ohio State Journal after graduation. After several years, he went to work with the John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company, covering Ohio and West Virginia. He was elected to Grandview’s City Council, and was later chosen as its fourth mayor, serving from 1915 until 1919. In 1922 Seibert and two other residents donated the money for Grandview to purchase park land for community use.
In 1913 he was elected the first president of the “Brotherhood," a Tri-Village area service organization that met monthly at Congregational Church, which he was partially responsible for helping establish. Both Claude and Martha were active in Boulevard Presbyterian Church, which was organized in 1925, and for more than 30 years was secretary of the board of trustees of Central Presbyterian Church.
The Seiberts' son, Sam, graduated from Grandview High School in 1925 and enrolled in business at Ohio State and was elected President of the Student Council when he was a junior. While attending OSU, he contracted influenza, which rapidly ended up as pneumonia, and he died after being hospitalized for two weeks.
Seibert became nationally recognized for his knowledge and commitment to insurance procedures and information. He was eventually named second Vice President of the National Life Insurance Co. of Cleveland. He died in Minnesota in 1938, and Martha died in 1945.
This article originally appeared on ThisWeek: Grandview Heights Moment in Time
