Emily Pulitzer Restoring Girlhood Home in Cincinnati

Emily lived in the home from age 5 to 24.

​An alert reader pointed Daily RFT today to a recent article in the Cincinnati Enquirer that reports how St. Louis' Emily Pulitzer is spending a small fortune to restore her childhood home.

The modernist-style house (right) was built in 1938 on nine wooded acres in the Woodlawn suburb of Cincinnati. The house has sat abandoned and rotting for years, and that didn't sit right with a woman who drives by the home each day on her way to work. She thought it a shame that the eclectic structure was being targeted for development.

So, she did some research and discovered that Emily Pulitzer (nee Rauh) grew up in the home before moving to St. Louis and marrying a newspaper publisher. The woman sent Pulitzer a letter last year, and Pulitzer responded in spades.

Pulitzer purchased the home and is now spending an estimated million or so bucks restoring it to its original condition. Last week Pulitzer donated the home to the Cincinnati Preservation Association.

The home and its property was slated for new development.

​"This mindless destruction of quality is very disturbing," Pulitzer told the Enquirer. "We must save great architecture."

Pulitzer's father, Frederick Rauh, was an insurance executive. Her mother, Harriet, was an arts activist. You might say that Emily, with her Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, is a chip off the old block of dear ol' mom. Harriet Rauh was an avid collector of modern art and an early board member of Cincinnati's Contemporary Arts Center. She passed away in 2003. The Rauhs sold the home in 1962.