Today, I'm going to check out a very interesting building in the Bronx just down the road from
the Bronx Museum of the Arts, which is just over there.
It's an older building... Well, not too much older, I guess. It's
probably about 100 years old at this pointm, and it's called the Andrew Freedman Home.
Now, I moved to the Bronx just a few years ago, and I've been enjoying exploring it. It's
the borough that no one really talks about unless you're talking about the Yankees or
the Bronx Zoo maybe, and it has a lot of fun little surprises and quirks in it.
I like the Museum of the Arts, which is down over there. But this mansion sort of thing
sits here on Grand Concourse, and it's always fascinated me every time I go by it.
So this is the Andrew Freedman Home, and of course after I saw it the first time I did some research,
and what I found is that this millionaire
named Andrew Freedman had almost lost his fortune in the Panic of 1907.
And he didn't want that to happen to any of his friends, so he had this house built.
It was basically like a homeless shelter for millionaires. This is where millionaires who
maybe had fallen on hard times could go and live even though they weren't millionaires anymore.
And it was part of Andrew Freedman's will, so it wasn't something that he built in his lifetime.
It was something that he had planned for to happen in the future, after his death.
And so this house operated like that until the
1960s, when it ran out of funding, as you might imagine, and they had to start charging rent.
So people left, and it kind of fell into disrepair, disuse. I mean,
as far as I could tell, people still lived there. The place was bought in the 1980s by a non-profit
senior home center, and they turned it into a senior home.
And then it kind of became more of an art center.
And that's what it functions as today. It's an art center. They have artist studios.
You can apply for a residency. And they also have— in the basement is a head start program
for preschool. But what a fun little fascinating thing,
a little gem here in the Bronx. You can go and visit during normal times. It's actually open,
they have programs and things you can go to on the weekends and whatnot,
so hopefully that'll start up again soon. If you want to make your way here,
easiest thing to do is take the D to 167th Street. They have an exit right here. So
anyway, just a quick little thing about this Andrew Freedman Home. See you next time.