The Jolls House:Orchard Park’s Italianate Treasure Celebrates its Sesquicentennial
By Christine Gibbons
The University of Buffalo Medical School invited prominent Buffalonian and lawyer, John G. Milburn, to address its 49th commencement in 1895. Known as an eloquent speaker, he encouraged the graduates to strive for excellence, saying, “Life is worth the struggle for the best that is in us.”
Willard Burton Jolls, one of the aspiring physicians honored that night, must have been inspired by those words. He spent the next 65 years devoting his many talents to improving his patients’ lives. Later, his adopted community of Orchard Park would prove that preserving his home and legacy was also worth the best that was in them.
This year marks the 150th anniversary of the completion of Johnson-Jolls house, a remarkable Italianate structure near the Four Corners in the Village of Orchard Park. It is now a museum where visitors learn about the dean of Orchard Park’s medical community and the town he served. There was a time, however, when the survival of both the house and his legacy were in doubt.
The story of the Jolls House begins in 1852, when Ambrose Johnson moved to East Hamburg, the town that would later become Orchard Park. He was a partner in Johnson & Hewson, a prosperous dry-goods store on the southeast corner of Quaker and Buffalo streets and served as town supervisor in 1862. Six years later, he purchased a parcel of land located on a stagecoach route near the store, with the idea of building a suitable house. He and his wife, Mary Abbey Johnson, were enamored of Italianate architecture and they chose a design that reflected their status in the community: The grand, three-story structure with a brick facade was a striking contrast to the more modest Greek Revival houses owned by their Quaker neighbors. Construction was completed on December 21, 1870, the day Willard Burton Jolls was born.
Ambrose Johnson, a partner in Johnson & Hewson, a dry-goods store, built the house in 1870 to reflect his prominent status in the community. At the time, East Hamburg (now Orchard Park), had fewer than 400 residents.
Credit: Orchard Park Historical Society
Among its Italianate-inspired details, the house features tall, elegant, narrow windows, along with a low-pitched roof with overhanging eaves and a symmetrical floor plan. A lofty, glass-enclosed cupola, which crowns the house and offers a commanding view of the surrounding countryside, was used during World War II for plane spotting. Indoor plumbing was an original feature of the house, with water pumped by a windmill in the yard and stored in a holding tank in the attic.
In documentation prepared for National Register of Historic Places recognition, preservationists noted, “At the time of its construction,1869-70, it represented an ultimate of style and modernity for its community. The building is significant for the wealth and variety of original detail, both exterior and interior and for its long-time associations with an illustrious local personage.” A century after it was built, the house was characterized as architecturally significant and an outstanding representative—and rare survivor—of its type and style.
When the Johnsons lived there, East Hamburg had less than 400 residents and was largely a farming community, but things began to change in 1883 when the Buffalo Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway was extended through the town. Although its primary purpose was to move Pennsylvania coal to upstate New York, the railroad also offered passenger and freight service that opened up commerce in the small towns along its route. Soon, East Hamburg had its first high school, telephone service and a volunteer fire company. In 1885, the Query Club was founded as the town’s first lending library.
Ambrose Johnson sold his store to Angeline Brown in 1877 and four years later, Angeline and Catherine Brown purchased the Johnson house. The next chapter in the story of the Johnson-Jolls Complex began in 1900 when they rented the house to the town’s best-known country doctor, Willard Burton Jolls, and his wife Ida.
Known to family and close associates as Burt, Dr. Jolls was the oldest of six children born to Warren Jolls, a Dayton, NY, dairy farmer, and Elizabeth Morrell Jolls, a birthright Hicksite Quaker and daughter of a Vermont midwife. He was also the great-grandson of Clarissa Stevens, a member of the Native American Kanienʼkehá꞉ka (Mohawk) tribe.
Burt was homeschooled and later attended public schools in Dayton. He was still a teenager when his father died, and he faced a difficult decision — whether to maintain the dairy farm or continue his studies. Encouraged by his mother, education won the day and he attended the Fredonia Normal School and began medical school in 1892 while boarding with a Quaker family. Later, members of the East Hamburg Quaker community encouraged the young doctor to establish a practice in their small town south of Buffalo.
Dr. Willard Burton “Bert” Jolls and his wife, Ida Markham. After graduating from medical school, the Quaker community enticed him to establish his practice in their small town south of Buffalo.
Credit: Orchard Park Historical Society
Ida Markham was Burt Jolls’ childhood sweetheart. When newly married, she accompanied him to East Hamburg. The doctor later told a friend that Ida was not happy about the prospects of going so far away from home, but she and the doctor accepted the call. She cried and the horse stumbled as they made their way to the village, and she arrived wet, tired and dirty from tears and dust. All their possessions were in their horse and buggy. For their first Christmas together, her parents gave them a sack of flour, a practical and welcome gift, for it meant they would have bread in the months ahead.
At that time, house calls were made in a horse-drawn buggy or sleigh, and sometimes Dr. Jolls rode horseback. He kept three horses in the barn behind the house, one for the morning calls, one for the afternoon and one as a spare. Warming stones heated the sleigh in cold weather and the doctor carried a shovel and pliers in case he had to cut fences and detour through fields to navigate around snowdrifts.
Burt estimated he delivered 1,200 babies during his career, without ever losing a mother, in an era before prenatal care was routine. It was standard practice for Dr. Jolls to harness his horse late at night and go miles into the country to attend a birth—a service for which he charged eight dollars. Regular office calls were 50 cents, house calls in the village were 75 cents and he asked two dollars for trips made to West Falls. In 1910, he was among the first in town to buy an automobile, to facilitate house calls. He was also the first to have residential telephone service in East Hamburg, which meant patients could reach him day or night.
Dr. Jolls in his buggy. In a time before routine prenatal care became the norm, he estimated he delivered about 1200 babies in his career, priding himself on never losing a mother.
Credit: Orchard Park Historical Society
Burt and Ida Jolls first rented a house and office in the village for 12 dollars a month. In 1900, they moved to the Johnson house, which they also rented. Records show Ida Jolls purchased the property for $4,000 from Catherine Brown in 1902. Just two months later, a fire destroyed several village buildings, leveling the former Johnson & Hewson store and threatening the Jollses’ house. Dr. Jolls rushed to save their new home by using the windmill behind the house to draw well water that he sprayed on the roof.
Originally, the doctor used two rooms on the ground floor of the house for a waiting room and office. When he wrote a script for his first patient, the druggist said he couldn’t fill it because he carried only “grocery drugs.” After that, Dr. Jolls stocked his own medications and later, a three-room addition to the back of the house provided an office suite and a laboratory, where he mixed his own pharmaceuticals.
The doctor added unusual elements for a house of that time. A Taber Vacuum House Cleaning System, manufactured in Buffalo, was installed in the cellar and used connection receptacles on each floor and in the doctor’s office to collect dust. In 1907, a Williamson Underfeed Heater was purchased for the basement. It not only warmed the house, but also drew cool air from under the porch that was directed through a shaft to the furnace. The duct system then sent comfortable, cooling air through the house in the summer months.
For more than 20 years, Dr. Jolls authored an Orchard Park Press column, “Timely Health Talks,” which offered home medical advice. When he retired, the paper estimated he had written more than a million words, printed over the 25-year run of the column. He also practiced dentistry and psychiatry and served as the town’s coroner. In his role as the public school doctor, he administered inoculations and was on call for emergencies at the town’s schools. Appointed town health officer in 1904, Dr. Jolls held the position for over four decades—at the time of his retirement, his remarkable tenure was an Erie County health service record.
Burt became a proponent of improving the sanitary infrastructure in the late 1930s because most houses in the village still lacked septic systems. He joined forces with village mayor Herbert M. Anthony to make the case for installing a modern sewer system, which they viewed as a necessity but that property owners found exorbitant. The disagreement was settled in court and a comprehensive system was completed in 1941.
Dr. Jolls was Orchard Park’s own Renaissance man. After purchasing an inexpensive box camera while in medical school, he became an avid photographer and an unofficial chronicler of Orchard Park’s history. He built a darkroom in the basement of the house to develop his photographs and displayed many on the walls of his office. One of his collections features pictures taken at the 1901 Pan American Exposition. A member of the Buffalo Guild of Organists, Dr. Jolls also played the trombone and cornet. In 1915, he purchased a pump organ from the Mason and Hamlin Organ Company of New York City, which is still in working order in the dining room.
In order to communicate more effectively with his patients, Burt learned Italian and German. He was an avid reader and kept scores of medical texts in his office, as well as volumes of history, music, poetry and fiction. Ever proud of his Native American heritage, he assembled a collection of American Indian artifacts. In 1954, he was inducted as an honorary member into the Wolf Clan of the Seneca tribe and was given the name Hah-deh-jehs-to-wah (Consulting Physician).
Working in his basement darkroom was only one of Jolls’ hobbies. He played trombone, cornet and a pump organ and was an avid reader on various subjects. As a nod to his Native American heritage, he also collected numerous artifacts. Here he is seen being inducted into the Wolf Clan of the Seneca tribe and named Hah-deh-jehs-to-wah (Consulting Physician).
Credit: Orchard Park Historical Society
Lifelong Orchard Park resident Dennis Mill, who was later elected to the town board and served as town supervisor, recalls Dr. Jolls was his family’s doctor over three generations, beginning with his grandfather who knew him on a personal basis and bought a two-wheeled buggy from him. As health officer, Dr. Jolls granted his father the license to sell milk from his farm, Orchard Hills Dairy. Mill was an active youngster and he remembers the doctor greeting him in the waiting room by saying, “What did you do to yourself now?” Jolls would check at the house every day when he was sick, at a time when you didn’t go to the doctor for, “every little thing.”
Following World War II, Orchard Park began transitioning from a farming hub to a bedroom community, and a post-war surge in population led officials to conclude the town needed a new municipal center. Dr. and Mrs. Jolls generously offered the lot south of their home for the site of the new building.
The dedication ceremony for the new center was set for a day in November 1949 when then-Governor Thomas E. Dewey was scheduled to be in the area and had agreed to deliver the principal address. School children got an early release to attend the first official visit of a state governor to Orchard Park. Town Historian John Printy described that day. “Shortly, a large black limousine with motorcycle escort drew up to the curb. Various officials greeted the governor and Dr. and Mrs. Jolls were presented to the crowd. Governor Dewey praised the good Doctor for his generosity and the people of the community for their progressiveness in establishing this new seat of government…It was truly a day to be remembered in Orchard Park.”
Early in 1958, town officials planned a ceremony for March 4, to honor Dr. and Mrs. Jolls for their more than 60 years of service. The evening’s activities were to include professional greetings delivered by Dr. Herbert Mann, a colleague who practiced medicine in Orchard Park. The week before, the event was proclaimed “Dr. and Mrs. Willard B. Jolls Week,” and residents were called upon to recognize the couple who had been an essential part of the community for most of the 20th century.
Ida Jolls was treated at Mercy Hospital during the month leading up to the celebration, but insisted plans should proceed. Sadly, the girl who caught Burt Jolls’ eye 70 years earlier succumbed to pneumonia the morning of the event. Four days later, Dr. Mann died after suffering a heart attack. Dr. Jolls was eventually feted, but it was a different evening than the town fathers anticipated when they originally declared, “former patients and friends and colleagues and associates from near and far will let Dr. Jolls know that they have been better people because of him, and that his community will not soon forget the mark that he left in her heart.”
After Mrs. Jolls’ death, their long-time housekeeper Millie Michelfelder cared for Dr. Jolls and he continued to practice medicine until 1960. Although the Jollses had no children, Millie was like a daughter and the doctor “sold” her the house for 50 cents in 1962, so that she could live out the remainder of her life in the home she had grown to love.
Millie Michelfelder and Ida Jolls in the kitchen. After Ida’s death, Dr. Jolls recognized Millie’s importance to the family and ‘sold’ her the house in 1962 for 50 cents.
Credit: Orchard Park Historical Society
A few months shy of his 93rd birthday, Willard Burton Jolls became ill with a heart condition and was admitted to Mercy Hospital, where he died on October 11, 1963.
Saving the Jolls House
Millie Michelfelder lived alone in the house for 15 years. Although she adopted a reclusive lifestyle, she continued to maintain the extensive flower and vegetable gardens in back of the house and keep the home precisely as it was when Dr. and Mrs. Jolls were alive. The morning of October 26, 1978, Richard Benning, who often checked on Millie, found her lying on the kitchen floor, the victim of a stroke. She died later that day.
Millie willed the house and its contents to Benning and her sister. They opted to sell the property but their decision sparked concern in the community, especially among members of the Orchard Park Historical Society. The following January, the town was offered right of first refusal and agreed to purchase the property for $110,000. The Town Board announced they were exploring all possible uses for the house and grounds, including converting the house for municipal office space. Others thought the Jolls House should be preserved intact, for its architectural significance and because it was the only complete turn-of-the-century doctor’s office in this part of the country.
In the meantime, everything in the house was set to be sold before the June closing date. More than 700 hours were spent sorting and pricing the contents, including furnishings, accessories, utensils and clothing. Over a three-day period, 2,500 people went through the house, some of whom waited three hours in the rain. Traffic was so heavy on the first day that police were assigned to the premises. At the end, everything but the contents of the doctor’s office was gone and the Jolls house, having suffered years of inattention, faced an uncertain future. A newspaper article bemoaned the fact that the architectural beauty of the Jolls House couldn’t disguise years of neglect.
Dennis Mill remembers most people in the community supported saving the house to preserve it for future generations, but there were others who thought the property should have been used for a project that might have entailed razing the structure. Having known Dr. Jolls all their lives, Mill and other board members felt the town needed to protect that part of its history, because, “If we do nothing but tear everything down, what do we pass on to our children?”
As rumors spread through the community, the $1.5 million estimate to convert the house into municipal offices proved too costly and the historical society lacked the funds to undertake restoration. A compromise was reached when the board decided to retain ownership of the house, but find a tenant to lease the building. The outbuildings were leveled and the back of the property was taken for municipal parking. The house was in dire need of repairs and so someone willing to put money into the house was sought to get it to the point where the town could comfortably manage it. The town leased the house to Dr. Timothy Clare, a dentist who did the renovations with the board’s oversight, which got the town over the initial impact of assuming responsibility for the updates.
The Jolls property in 1979. The property was leased to a dentist who completed some much needed renovations with the board’s oversight.
Led by Town Historian John Printy, the historical society asked that they be given use of Dr. Jolls’ office suite and its contents for public display. The request was granted and the three-room addition was walled off from the rest of the rooms. In 1980, the Johnson-Jolls Complex was added to the National Register of Historic Places, thanks largely to Printy’s efforts.
Previously located in the Quaker Meeting House on East Quaker Street, the historical society needed to find new headquarters in 1996, which coincided with the expiration of the town’s lease with Dr. Clare. The town board voted to turn the Jolls house over to the Orchard Park Historical Society, with the agreement that the town would be responsible for exterior repairs and upkeep and the society would return the interior to its original condition and handle costs related to the inside of the house. Mill, who was town supervisor by that time, felt it was fair because the town didn’t want to put the full burden on the historical society, and thought the continued cooperation between the town and the historical society made the arrangement work.
The Orchard Park Historical Society took possession of the Johnson-Jolls Complex on July 1, 1996. Members immediately began fundraising, applying for grants and restoring the interior of the house by adding period-appropriate wallpaper and decorations and providing accessibility for handicapped visitors. Renovations required restoring the areas used as dental offices, expanding the kitchen and downstairs bathroom and repairing molding and wood plank flooring. The doors to the doctor’s office were reopened and jack posts were installed in the basement to support the first floor. One generous donor completely furnished the formal dining room, so that it looked as it did when Dr. and Mrs. Jolls hosted dinners there. After a call went out to everyone who bought items at the sale 17 years earlier, many of the Jollses’ belongings were returned, including the Mason and Hamlin organ.
Today, the Orchard Park Historical Society Museum offers rotating displays of local interest, like agricultural implements, antique toys and military artifacts. The beautifully restored home and the doctor’s office are open to the public for tours throughout the year, although those are on hold until COVID-19 social distancing requirements are eased. The planned sesquicentennial celebrations, including a community reception, an art exhibition, Millie Michelfelder’s 124th birthday party and a display of Orchard Park High School yearbooks, will be rescheduled. The society’s Facebook page will offer updates of the revised schedule.
The story of the Jolls House continues, as society members are using the unexpected pandemic pause to perform an assessment of the museum’s archives with the help of the Documentary Heritage and Preservation Services of New York. Their goal is to determine the best way to maintain and support the museum so that future generations will know that saving the Jolls House was, “worth the struggle for the best that is in all of us.”
About the Author
Christine Gibbons is a member of the Board of Directors of the Orchard Park Historical Society. The author would like to acknowledge Suzanne Kulp and Joseph Bieron for their research of Orchard Park’s history, which provided the basis for some of the information for this article.