178 Columbia Heights, ca. 1980.

This Italianate style frame house, built in 1845, was once the residence of Ferdinand Ward, the "best-hated man in the United States."

In 1880, Ward purchased the building for $40,000 after securing investment from former U.S. President General Ulysses Grant, an investor in his Wall Street brokerage firm. He outfitted the house in what the Brooklyn Daily Eagle described as,

Ward, the son of a small town pastor and Protestant missionary, transformed the residence into “one of the most elaborately and expensively furnished houses in Brooklyn.” But it was all to be short-lived: in 1884, Ward's brokerage was revealed to be a massive Ponzi scheme, through which he defrauded many prominent New Yorkers, including the family of the 18th President.