Sameul N. Pike
SAMUEL N. PIKE the builder of the magnificent opera houses in Cincinnati and New York, was of Jewish parentage. The family name was Hecht, the German for Pike. He was born near Heidelberg, and in 1827, when five years of age, came to American, and in 1844 to Cincinnati. He gained colossal wealth in the liquor business, and having been an great admirer of Jenny Lind he built for the Muse of Song a temple which he said should do honor to Cincinnati. On February 22, 1859 the opera house, the largest and most beautiful in America, was opened with song. It was burnt in 1866, and later rebuilt. He was a silent, calm man, and while it was building none knew his object, when from the roof of the Burnet House he saw the structure of his pride and ambition vanishing in the flames, he quietly smoked his cigar as unruffled as the most indifferent spectator, and while thus standing gazing in this calm contemplative attitude, one of the light-fingered gentry as calmly relieved him of his watch, of course, a first-class timekeeper.
The Grand Opera House in New York was begun at this time. He sold it to James Fisk, Jr. for $850,000. A gigantic speculation in land, reclaiming the Jersey marshes, near New York, brought him immense profits, so that at his death, in 1875, his fortune was well up in the millions. He used to say he “could not see why he should make money—he never fretted himself—he couldn’t help it.”
From Historical Collections of Ohio: By Henry Howe; Pub. 1888