On March 30, 1903, Adolphe Openhym exited his posh row house at 352 Riverside Drive (below, right) and took his usual morning horseback ride along the Riverside Park bridle path.
Afterward, the successful silk merchant at William Openhym & Sons and real estate investor returned to the home he shared with his wife and two sons, had breakfast, and then left the house again in “usual good health and spirits,” wrote The Sun on April 2. Reportedly he was clad in a top hat and frock coat and carried a cane or umbrella.
But instead of going to his office downtown on Mercer Street, 49-year-old Openhym was seen taking an uptown streetcar on Amsterdam Avenue, according to the Eagle. Around 11 a.m., a man matching his description was spotted by a “bridge tender” walking to the middle of the High Bridge—the 1848 bridge connecting Upper Manhattan to the Bronx across the Harlem River.
On the High Bridge, Openhym put down his hat, climbed a guardrail, and then leaped into the river, the bridge tender said, his body disappearing into the murky depths.
New York City’s rapacious tabloid dailies couldn’t resist the story—the apparent suicide of a wealthy business leader who possessed all the trappings of a charmed Gilded Age life. Reporters jumped into action, first seeking insight from Openhym’s family. They reported nothing amiss.
“I do not believe that my father has committed suicide,” one of Openhym’s sons told a reporter at the Evening World on April 1. “He has not been ill or suffering any kind of mental trouble. His home life was perfectly happy.” Reporters also visited his business partners, who were similarly puzzled and described their colleague as having “good mental health.”
Two days later, however, the Evening World changed the narrative. A front page story on April 3 claimed that the day Openhym went missing, there was a “tremendous row in the family.” Family servants who were interviewed described him as “cross” and that “nothing could be done to please him.” An unidentified business partner said that for two weeks, Openhym complained of “pains in his head.”
Nothing lurid came from these accounts, so newspapers focused on the search for Openhym’s corpse. For the next few weeks, the missing man’s family chartered boats and hired searchers to look for the body. Other searchers came to the Harlem River on their own with grappling hooks, anxious to gain the $5,000 reward the family offered for his remains.
Days passed. Without a body to confirm his death, rumors hit the news cycle: that Openhym didn’t really jump off the bridge, that he was spotted in restaurants in Yonkers, Mount Vernon, and Newburgh. “Is Adolph Openhym alive?” asked the Brooklyn Standard Union on April 8, spelling his name without the e at the end. “Since the offering of a big reward for information on his whereabouts, many persons have come forward to declare they have seen him since the day he disappeared.”
An AP story stated that detectives learned Openhym “had several hundred thousand dollars in cash where he could get it at a moment’s notice.” The story described him as “a man who has a keen appreciation of the good things of the world….He is a frank advocate of the luxurious life, and knows how to spend money royally.”
On April 22, even without a body, Openhym’s family accepted that he killed himself by leaping from High Bridge, a lawyer representing the family told the Evening World. Reporters asked the representative about the possibly that Openhym faked his death. “My God!” the lawyer replied angrily. “They will be charging the unfortunate man with murder next! They have already accused him of every crime in the calendar.”
Finally on April 27, Openhym’s body was found floating in the river. His pockets contained some bills and change, business letters, the photo of a child, a gold watch, a scarf with a pearl stick pin, gold cuff links, and a gold penknife, among other unsuspicious objects reported by various newspapers.
“The body was in a remarkably good state of preservation for one that had been in the water so long,” the New York Times stated. “It was completely dressed, even to the gloves, and the only mark upon it was a bruise across the face, which was believed to have been caused by striking the water as the man leapt from the bridge.”
His family held funeral services at their Riverside Drive home. About 300 people attended, but “the widow was too ill to be there,” the New-York Tribune reported. The contents of his will were also published. His estate was valued between $500,000 and $1 million, depending on the newspaper reporting on it, and he bequeathed money to the Society for Ethical Culture and Mount Sinai Hospital, among other charities.
The final stories about this tragedy focused on the coroner’s conclusion: that Openhym killed himself because his mind was “temporarily imbalanced.” According to the Brooklyn Times Union on May 1, “Openhym committed suicide while temporarily insane,” per the coroner’s official report. After that, the reporters moved on.
New York’s newspapers did their job—investigating leads, suggesting scandal, then following up with the dollar amount of the dead man’s estate and where his money would be going. What reporters couldn’t do is explain why such a fortunate man ended his life. Only Openhym could answer that, and he took his reasons to his grave.
[Third image: New-York Historical Society]
Ephemeral New York 