5 Orton Place

The large wood frame house on the corner of Hudson Street and Orton Place is distinguished by its many unique exterior details. When built the home featured roof cresting and many different surface treatments including angled
windows, clapboard siding and shingles. The home which also has an address of 344 Hudson originally marked the northeasterly bounds of Mulligan Street.

This home was built on speculation by H. H. Boughton, a milk dealer and developer who lived at 344 Hudson Street before Orton Place was opened in 1885. In July, 1889 Sally E. Boughton, his wife, sold this property to Hattie B. Haven for the sum of $7,500. Mrs. Haven enlarged this building and used it as an elegant boarding house along with 334 Hudson/10 Orton Place. Just two years after Mrs. Haven opened the boarding establishment, a scandal broke out in this home. The local paper gave a full and vivid description of the event: “There is a sensation on upper Hudson Street. Of course there is a woman in it, but she is not in Buffalo as much as she was and there are those who are sorry for her having been here. Still Mrs. Hattie B. Haven will have to be set down as unfortunate rather than anything else, and the fact that she left her elegant boarding house at the corner of Hudson Street and Orton Place last Sunday night and fled to Toronto merely proves that and nothing more. She was an ambitious and according to reports a very fine woman with a talent for business. Her husband travels for a business house, so she set to making money on her own account.”

“Shortly before Orton Place was opened the house at No. 344, now on the north corner of this street and Hudson Street, was built by H. H. Boughton, the milk dealer, and the house on the opposite corner was built soon after the street was opened. Mrs. Haven bought both of them, it is said, at least she got possession of them, and ran them as a single establishment. She built a large addition to the first house, and prospered so well that she is reported to have paid $2,800 on her purchase. She is called a very successful manager, and she so attached her boarders to her that there are still 25 there who remained in the face of her difficulties and were ready to run the establishment on the co-operative plan after she was gone, rather than give it up.”

“Mrs. Haven did well so long as her health was good, but last Thanksgiving she fell sick and things began to run at loose ends. She did not get a manager who was equal to the task and she soon became despondent, almost crazy over her troubles. It wasn’t long before the bills began to pour in, and the more she was unable to meet them the more her creditors clamored. She owed grocers and butchers and dry-goods houses and furniture houses, and she at length found that she could never pay them. Then she sent for a Main street drygoods firm and turned her household goods over to them. They made a deal with the furniture house and to-day every article of indoor furnishing is ticketed Barnes, Hengerer & Co. or Tifft Furniture Company. It is learned at the house that the former firm has possession of the whole and will see to the leasing of the house.”

“Mrs. Haven left Buffalo last Sunday night for Toronto, where she remains with friends. She told some of the boarders she was going, but the hired help was not bidden good-bye. It is stated that she hadn’t money enough of her own to get away with. It was largely through compassion on the servants that the boarders undertook to carry on the business, hoping in this way to pay up their back wages. But a new landlady has already been found in the daughter of Mr. Boughton, the former owner, who will take charge to-day, and the complications, so far as the boarders are concerned, promise to be over soon.”

“There seems to be much sympathy for Mrs. Haven. The life of the boardinghouse keeper is a hard one at best, and it takes talent to make money in the business. It is said that the poor woman in her distress could see nothing but bills plastered over the walls of her room and was in danger of going insane.”

This home continued to be used as a boarding house and by 1900 it was managed by Mary McCabe and Elizabeth Braynard. From 1912-1916 this home became institutionalized and was owned and operated as the Wheel Chair Guild Home, now known as the Schofield Residence, an organization still in existence.