It contained "55 rooms to accommodate 90 old ladies, (called "inmates" at the time), each with a closet; apartments for matron and attendants; eight large pantries and a complete bathroom on the 1st floor; a chapel and committee room which opened on to one another, and an eight bed hospital, all on the 2nd floor". Admittance to the home was reserved for women over the age of 60 who had lived in Brooklyn or Williamsburg for at least 7 years and had appropriate character references. The cost for life-long care was $60.00 (approx. $1,800.00 today).
I'm only guessing at the reason, but apparently, in 1899, being called "respectable, aged, indigent females" must have taken on a negative connotation, because they changed the name to the "Graham Home For Old Ladies".
By 1958, the fee was $2,000 ($16,300 of today's dollars). A brochure that year described a tenor of life that had endured for a century: ''Here every week . . . meets the Thimble Bee. So violently do the machines whirl, the needles ply, it is a problem to keep them in work.''
The Institute lasted into the 1960's and the house was briefly vacant until it re-opened as the Bull Shippers Motor Lodge which became notorious as a cheap hotel for prostitution. By 1985, the building was one of the most notorious welfare hotels in the city. "Up to 27 families were temporarily housed in such Gothic squalor that newspaper articles were written about it. Bob Herbert, then with The New York Daily News, described the former home as an ''ancient, soot-black, five-story building that sits back from the avenue and looks dismal enough to have been designed by Edgar Allan Poe.'' The building was, once again, closed down and boarded up in the late 80's.
In 2001, it was renovated into 25 two and three-bedroom condos which promptly sold for prices ranging from $325,000 to $495,000. I'm not sure how many old ladies bought in.
1 comment:
Ah, back when we could institutionalize people to forget about them. The wonderful world of yesteryear, the golden age.
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