Historic apartment building becomes vacant lot

COLUMBUS Jane Evans Novicki remembers visiting her grandmother at the L-shaped apartment building that stood at the corner of 14th Street and 28th Avenue.

Rose North Evans lived in the two-story brick structure for less than a decade after moving there around 1947 and Novicki was just a child at the time but the building had a character to it that was hard to forget.

The biggest thing that everybody remembers about those places is that they had those Murphy beds, Novicki said, recalling nights spent on the bed that tucked inside the wall.

There were also card games, and many of them.

There was a bridge game going at all times in those apartments, Novicki recalled. They played lots and lots of cards.

Novicki guesses there was a card table in each of the 12 apartments during her grandmothers time there. The games would bring together the buildings tenants, including Edgar Howard, a former U.S. congressman, lieutenant governor, judge, attorney and long-time editor and publisher of The Telegram who lived around the corner from Evans in apartment 10.

Novicki remembers Howard as the man who smoked up a storm while living there with his daughter Mary.

The building, named the Whitmoyer Apartments at the time, was known for its prestige, which attracted some of the citys most prominent residents after its construction in the 1930s.

Evans was the daughter of James North, whose brothers Luther and Frank were the famed Indian scouts.

In its day, that was the place in town if people lived in an apartment, said Bud Fleischer, whose aunt Grace Schmid owned the property for 41 years. It was the elite.

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Historic apartment building becomes vacant lot