Otto was born on February 21, 1867, in Mannheim, Grand Duchy of Baden, and raised there, by his Jewish parents, Emma (née Eberstadt) and Bernard Kahn.

[4] Besides his father-in-law, Kahn's other partners included Jacob Schiff, himself the son-in-law of Solomon Loeb, who co-founded the firm, and Paul and Felix Warburg.

Kahn, although only 30 years old, took an almost equal part with Harriman in the gigantic task of reorganizing the Union Pacific Railroad, a work which in its early stages had been handled by Schiff.

A notable instance was his rescuing from collapse the Pearson-Farquhar syndicate when it found itself in deep water in an attempt to combine several existing lines of railroad into a South American transcontinental system.

[3] In 1933, the smooth and affable Kahn successfully disarmed antagonism against members of the banking community during four days of testimony before the United States Senate's Pecora Commission hearings into the Wall Street Crash of 1929.

The Senate's lead counsel Ferdinand Pecora wrote on page 293 in his 1939 memoir Wall Street Under Oath about Otto Kahn: "No suaver, more fluent, and more diplomatic advocate could be conceived.

[2] During the last years of Kahn's life he became increasingly frail and suffered from arteriosclerosis, high blood pressure and attacks of angina pectoris.

On March 29, 1934, following lunch in the private dining room of Kuhn, Loeb & Co., Kahn suffered a massive heart attack and died, aged 67.

[7] An extremely wealthy financier, Kahn was president and chairman of the board of directors of the Metropolitan Opera, vice-president of the New York Philharmonic and treasurer for the American Federation of Arts.

Kahn's daughter, Margaret, married John Barry Ryan II and was a New York society doyenne and benefactor of the Metropolitan Opera.

It is sometimes claimed that one of Otto Kahn's most enduring achievements is his uncanny lookalike persona that purportedly became the iconic mascot for the Monopoly board game.

[8] However, the family of the illustrator Daniel Fox, who in 1936 created the mascot Rich Uncle Pennybags for the Monopoly board game, in 2013, credited J. P. Morgan as being the inspiration for the character.

Following Kahn's death in 1934, the property was sold to the City of New York for use as a retreat for sanitation workers and then later a government training school for merchant marine radio operators.

Following the departure of EMA, vandals repeatedly set fire to the building, but because Kahn had insisted on constructing a concrete, brick and steel structure, the house survived.

In 1984 a local developer, Gary Melius, purchased the estate for $1.5 million and began the largest private renovation project ever attempted in the United States.

[19] In 1927, Kahn commissioned German boat builder Lürssen to build a high-speed motor yacht for use on the river Rhine and in the North Sea.

Oheka II came to the notice of the German Navy, resulting in their development of the Schnellboot high speed torpedo craft within the restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles.