During his stay in America, Louis worked for the Michigan Central Railroad in Detroit, began various businesses and found brief success as an inventor. Marie van Beethoven found success as a piano teacher and concert pianist, touring the United States and Montreal. By 1875, Louis became general manager of the New York Commissionaire Company. The music critic for "The New Yorker" magazine, Alex Ross, states however that Louis "ran a scheme renting wheelchairs to elderly people at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia" under the Roll-Chair Company. Louis and his family left America and were reported to have stayed in Vienna briefly in 1878.