Born in 1847, Rudolph Pretzinger emigrated to the United States with his parents at the age of seven and settled in Dayton. The death of his father in 1863 prompted him to undertake man's work, whereupon he earned a pharmacy degree and began a career that culminated in his ownership of a prominent downtown drugstore, a position in which he remained until his 1909 death.Drury, A.W. History of the City of Dayton and Montgomery County, Ohio. Chicago and Dayton: S.J. Clarke, 1909. Pretzinger's American-born younger brother Albert, one of Dayton's leading architects, designed the house, which was completed in 1889. The property was the focus of a tax lawsuit in 1900: having paid his share of the cost of paving Wyoming Street along his property in 1894, Pretzinger refused to pay for the cost of a sidewalk on the property's Main Street side in 1896, based on his interpretation of an Ohio law forbidding repeated taxation of a property for street improvements within a five-year period.Ohio State Reports. Vol. 63: January Term, 1900. Columbus, Ohio Supreme Court, 1900. While the Montgomery County court ruled in his favor, the case was reversed on appeal to the circuit court, but Pretzinger was ultimately victorious on appeal to the Supreme Court. Following Pretzinger's death, the property remained the home of his widow.
