Over the last 165 years, in the heart of Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood, our house at 2083 West 26th Street has served as a residence, a rooming house, a spiritualist temple, a sheet metal shop, and now an art gallery. Through the years the small 4-room house with just one-and-a-half stories grew into a two-story brick structure with eight bedrooms and 3,105 square feet of living space, including the basement. The 1940 census indicates that there were more than 20 occupants living here; that includes a family of 9 and rooming house residents.

 The oldest part of the house dates from 1857, just three years after Ohio City, once a separate town, was annexed to Cleveland. Brick mason, Adam Karn, built it for his family of 6, but by the time Mr. Karn died in 1893, there had been many additions. His daughter, Catherine, managed it as a rooming house.

 In 1912, she sold the house to John and Elizabeth Steinhauer, who had been tenants, and big changes started happening. Following a fire in 1913, the Steinhauers added a full second floor with four rooms and a bath. They used much of the original lumber for the project, including some charred timbers that still can be seen today.  Two years later they added a six-room addition to the back of the building and dug a large basement under the entire structure. The basement level had a streetside entrance at the back of the house.  Elizabeth used the extra rooms upstairs for lodgers, and at one point, the addition in the back was known as the Steinhauer Hotel

 But Elizabeth was more than just a landlady, she was known as the spiritualist, Madame Wau Walker. Elizabeth used the large basement area as her temple for telling fortunes and holding seances. It was a somewhat elegant setting, with velvet curtains adorning the walls and proper mood lighting for sessions with clients.

In our son, Tim’s, research he found an accounting of a plain clothes police officer seeking to arrest Elizabeth for, “telling his fortune.” Her defense was that, since she was a spiritualist, she could not have committed a crime for knowing his future. It is unclear how the case ended, but whatever the outcome, the temple grew in popularity as the Light and Truth Spiritualist Church, hosting celebrities from spiritualist circles, who gave lectures and readings.

As time went by, the Steinhauers made improvements. Advertisements for their rooms boasted of electric lights, hot water, and heat.  By 1920, their five daughters were out of the house, but 10 lodgers remained. The temple was still active.

Then Joseph and Mary Gebura bought the property from the Steinhauers, in the spring of 1927 – and once again there were big changes. They had immigrated to Cleveland from what is now the Slovak Republic. He was a tinsmith by trade. When they moved in, the spiritualist temple was moved out. Joseph used the space to house his business, American Sheet Metal Co. This sign, still on display in the room that housed the shop, once hung on the outside of the house.

By 1930, 14 people lived in the house—the Geburas and their three children, a second family with three more children and four roomers. By World War II, the Geburas had seven children, all of whom were born in the house. They and the tenants raised the total population to 21 people.

By the late 1970s, the senior Geburas had passed away and most of their children had moved on. In 2000, just two Geburas remained, Helen Gebura, their daughter, and Maryann Gebura, their daughter-in-law. Both women were in their 60s. In 2010, our son, Tim, bought the property which is adjacent to his home on Chatham. He knew the women well, having moved into the neighborhood in the late 1980s. Through a series of conversations, literally over the backyard fence, he and the Gebura women agreed to a purchase. 

Once the house was totally renovated in 2011, Chuck and Bea moved into the front apartment. Thus, the next iteration of the building was born. Chuck now uses many of the old fixtures from the tin shop in his painting studio and gallery. You'll see the heavy worktables, a large industrial scales and vice along with built-in shelving made from sheet metal.

Tim, who is a real historian, loves researching Cleveland history, and his main goal when renovating our house was to maintain its integrity and the many lives it has had.