Nicholas P. Smith
Nicholas P. Smith, a real-estate dealer, making a specialty of handling manufacturing and other business property, including the buying, selling and leasing, the construction of factories and the financing of manufacturing enterprises and other business concerns, has his head office at No. 810 Fourth National Bank building. He has been actively engaged in real-estate operations since 1901 and is today the best known and most prominent real-estate man in Cincinnati dealing in power buildings. He is watchful, alert and determined. He seizes an opportunity as it arises and defers no action to a later hour if it can be accomplished at the present moment. He is thoroughly informed concerning the realty market and has so manipulated real-estate deals that all patrons, buyers, sellers, lessees and lessors are always satisfied.
Mr. Smith is a native son of Cincinnati, born January 25, 1867. His grandfather, Hugh Smith was a pioneer coal operator of Allegheny, now a part of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. He was also promoter of the now enormous business of towing coal by steam on the Ohio river. His son, Joseph Smith Jr., the father of Nicholas P. Smith was also engaged in the coal business and came to Cincinnati from Allegheny, Pennsylvania, in the late ‘50s to act as manager for the wholesale coal firm in which his father, Hugh Smith, was largely interested. After establishing the sales office in this city Joseph Smith, Jr., decided to locate permanently and became prominently identified with the wholesale coal business here, conducting it until his retirement in 1870. He continued to make his home in Cincinnati, however, until his death, which occurred in 1902. He had made for himself an honorable name and position in business circles and he left to his family not only a goodly heritage but also an untarnished name and an example well worthy of emulation. The mother of our subject was the oldest child of Nicholas Patterson, who was one of the pioneer manufacturers of Cincinnati. He was the owner of an extensive iron foundry prior to and during the Civil war at California, Ohio, and also conducted simultaneously a factory for the making of tin and japanned goods on a large scale. He lived to the ripe old age of eighty-eight years and died in 1897.
Nicholas P. Smith was a pupil in the public school but received much of his education in the old Chickering Institute and in the Hughes high school, from which he was graduated in 1885. He then became connected with the lumber and sawmill industry in Kentucky and for years was auditor for the Kentucky Lumber Company, the Kentucky Union Lumber Company and the Kentucky Union Land Company, these companies being allied organizations. Mr. Smith acted as auditor for all three with headquarters in Lexington and Clay City, Kentucky. He severed his connection therewith, however, to establish his present business in 1901. For several years he conducted a general real-estate business but for the past few years has been making a specialty of power buildings, manufactories and business real-estate. He has also financed various business undertaking, has leased many power buildings and has thus been a promoter of trade interests no only on his own account but also in behalf of others.
In 1906 Mr. Smith was united in marriage to Miss Nettie Lent Cohan, who was born in Cleveland, Ohio, but lived in Florida for many years. His fraternal relations are with the Masons and he is also a member of the Cincinnati Business Men’s Club. There has been no esoteric phase in all of his record. He has worked along lines open to investigation, winning success because he has honorably striven for it and gaining his patronage by reason of the fact that he has made his service in the real-estate field of value to his fellow townsmen.
From Cincinnati, The Queen City, Volume III, by Rev. Charles Frederic Goss, S. J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1912