Elmhurst / Bloch Family Mansion

Elmhurst was constructed as the family mansion of Samuel S. and Bertha Bloch, of the Bloch Brother’s Tobacco Company. Their son, Jesse A. Bloch, served in the West Virginia House of Delegate and Senate, and cast the deciding vote to ratify the 19th Amendment for West Virginia in 1920. In 1940 the Bloch family donated Elmhurst to the West Virginia Home for Aged Women. Today the building has been expanded several times and is called Elmhurst: The House of Friendship. 

Samuel S. Bloch was born on February 6, 1850 in Wheeling. Bloch studied law and shorthand reporting, and worked as a court reporter for a period before entering into business with his brother, Aaron. The brothers had a wholesale grocery and notions business, during which they started their manufacturing of cigars and stogies. In 1879, after noticing their employees chewing on scrap bits of tobacco left over from rolling cigars, the Bloch brothers were the first to develop chewing tobacco that was flavored. After a flood in 1884, the brothers discontinued their grocery business and focused on the “mail pouch” tobacco business. Bloch Brother’s Tobacco was officially organized in 1890 with Aaron Bloch as president and Samuel Bloch as vice-president. Samuel Bloch assumed the presidency in 1904 at the death of his brother.

Samuel S. Bloch married Bertha Prager in 1879 and they had four children, two sons and two daughters. He constructed the family mansion here on National Road in 1891 and named it “Elmhurst” due to the elm trees on the property. Bertha Prager Bloch died in November 1932 and Samuel S. Bloch died in October 1937 at Elmhurst at 87 years old.

Jesse and Jessie Bloch had their family home just down the street at 1302 National Road.

In 1940, the Bloch children donated “Elmhurst” to the Home of Aged Women. The institution was originally the West Virginia Home for Aged and was founded in April 1888 with a location on Thirteenth Street in Wheeling. In 1922 the organization changed to only caring for elderly women and was renamed the West Virginia Home for Aged Women. The four Bloch children donated “Elmhurst” to the Home to replace their original location in Wheeling. They donated the house in memory of their mother, Jesse Bloch saying “My sisters, my brother, and I desire to make this gift with the feeling that we are doing something that both father and mother would have approved.”

After the donation, the name of the house was changed to “The House of Friendship” and there have been expansions of the building in 1942, 1989, and 2009 to accommodate more women. After the 1989 renovation, the institution decided to bring back the building’s historic name, and it is now known as Elmhurst: The House of Friendship.

1940; Census Place: Wheeling, Ohio, West Virginia; Roll: m-t0627-04436; Page: 12B; Enumeration District: 35-36. Ancestry.com. 1940 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012. Accessed February 18, 2022.

“Elmhurst.” Ohio County Public Library. Accessed February 18, 2022. https://www.ohiocountylibrary.org/wheeling-history/5509.

“History. “Elmhurst: The House of Friendship. Accessed February 18, 2022. https://www.elmhurstpch.com/history/.

“Jesse A. Bloch, Wheeling.” WVGenWeb. Accessed February 18, 2022. https://www.wvgenweb.org/ohio/bloch.htm.

“Jesse Aaron Bloch. West Virginia State Department of Health—Division of Vital Statistics. Certificate of Death.” Accessed February 18, 2022. http://archive.wvculture.org/vrr/va_view.aspx?Id=5694111&Type=Death.

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