William Howard Taft National Historic Site

About this property

William Howard Taft National Historic Site is a historic house at 2038 Auburn Avenue in the Mount Auburn Historic District of Cincinnati, Ohio, a mile (1.6 km) north of Downtown. It was the birthplace and childhood home of William Howard Taft, the 27th president and the 10th chief justice of the United States. It is a two-story Greek Revival house built circa 1845. William Howard Taft's father, Alphonso Taft, came to Cincinnati from Vermont in 1838 to establish a law practice. He moved his family to this house a little over a decade later. Alphonso Taft became an early supporter of the Republican Party in Cincinnati. He lived in this house with his family and parents. He would eventually serve as the 31st United States Secretary of War and the 34th United States Attorney General. Subsequent to serving in those positions, Taft also served as United States Minister to Austria-Hungary, being appointed to this position in 1882 and in 1884, serving as United States Minister to Russia until 1885. The house is believed to have been built in the early 1840s, between 1844 and 1847 by a family named Hopkins. Alphonso bought the house at 60 Auburn Street (now 2038 Auburn Avenue), with its accompanying 1.82 acres, for $10,100 on June 13, 1851. Mount Auburn was once a popular area to live for upper-class Cincinnatians, as it allowed those of higher incomes to escape the sweltering heat and humidity of downtown Cincinnati summers. The Taft residence, a Greek Revival domicile, was relatively modest compared to other nearby residences, which were a mix of Second Empire, Italianate, and Georgian Revival. Alphonso's wife Fanny Phelps Taft died a year after the family moved to the Mount Auburn residence, in June 1852. In December 1853 Alphonso remarried, choosing a schoolteacher from Massachusetts named Louise Torrey. Louise Taft would give birth to their second child, William Howard Taft, in the house on September 15, 1857, presumably in the first-floor nursery in the rear ell. (The first child had died at age fourteen months from whooping cough.) Alphonso had six children living in the house, two by Fanny (three others had died beforehand) and four by Louise. The house was used for social events. Visitors included many local and state dignitaries, including future President James A. Garfield. Rugs in the parlor were often rolled up for dancing. Family activities took place in the library; Alphonso was an avid book collector. William would live in the house until he went to Yale University in 1874. Afterward, the Taft family would spend less time in the house, starting when Alphonso served in the Ulysses S. Grant administration. In 1877 a fire damaged the second floor and roof. Alphonso and Louise would lease the house in 1889, moving to California because the climate was thought to be beneficial for those with declining health. William had married in 1886, and the rest of the Taft sons had moved out by this point as well. In May 1891 Alphonso died in San Diego, California, and was buried in Cincinnati; the tenants of the Auburn house allowed the mourners to gather at the house for the funeral. Louise eventually was able to sell the house outright, after ten years of trying, in 1899 to Judge Albert C. Thompson, after returning to her home town of Millbury, Massachusetts, to live with her sister.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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