The Andrew Freedman Home

January 30, 2013 -

Once a retirement mansion for destitute millionaires, The Andrew Freedman Home is now a house divided. On the ground floor, it presents a restored version of its luxurious past, with a bed and breakfast that includes well appointed bedrooms, spacious ballrooms, an elegant saloon and a grand library. On upper floors, the home is a playground for pigeons that pick through the muck left behind by decades of decay. Though situated on the Grand Concourse, one of the busiest streets in the Bronx, this semi-abandoned New York City Landmark feels more like an urban version of The Overlook Hotel.

Built in 1924, The Andrew Freedman Home "was designed in the Italian Renaissance style," according to a denied Landmark designation request from 1974 (PDF), and is "an imposing limestone structure occupying an entire block facing the Grand Concourse." It was funded by a five million dollar bequest from Andrew Freedman, the "Father of the New York Subway" and a one-time owner of the New York Giants baseball team, whose dying wish in 1915 was to create a home for "aged and indigent gentlefolk... of culture and refinement."

"In short, it was built for indigent capitalists," wrote Vivian Gornick in "A Splendid and Bitter Isolation," a 1980 article for the Village Voice. "It broke Andrew Freedman's heart to think that men who had once held Wall Street in thrall were wandering around broke, not being listened to any more. More than that: it terrified him."  In order to house these sad compatriots, Freedman's bequest was used to create "a large beautiful structure whose interior strongly resembled a great 19th century hotel: carpeted lounges, all velvet wing chairs, marble fireplaces, great arched windows, an oak paneled library, chandeliered dining rooms, bedrooms complete with soft lamps, thick rugs, crisp linen. At dinner, black ties and long dresses, silver service, white-gloved waiters. And no one paid a cent."

Oak Paneled Library

Carpeted Hallway

Furnished Bedroom

In later years, The Andrew Freedman Home's mission would expand to embrace aged intellectuals, including professors, political scientists, painters, and university librarians. By 1983, however, "the increasing cost of maintaining the facility forced the home to close," according to a successful Landmark designation report from 1992 (PDF), and "the building was purchased by the Mid-Bronx Senior Citizens Council as housing for the elderly." The few remaining wealthy residents from the building's past were relocated, to be replaced with a more economically diverse set of retirees. The Council, which still owns the building today, used the ground floor level for a retirement home, daycare and event space, but "much of the rest of the vast building has been kept sealed off like a tomb, a time-capsule monument to the Bronx’s grand past," according to the New York Times.

In 2012, sections of the home's first and second floors were opened to the public for the first time during a unique installation by No Longer Empty titled "This Side of Paradise." The exhibit ran from April until June, and encouraged artists to incorporate artifacts left behind from the building's decaying past -  typewriters, pianos, hair dryers - to connect "the history of the home with the present day realities of the Bronx." Rooms on the first and second floors were given over to a variety of individuals, including graffiti artists, sculptors, and a posthumous installation of work by war photographer Tim Hetherington. A number of the sealed, abandoned rooms on the second floor were reclaimed and transformed into bright, colorful spaces.

"This Side of Paradise (I Lost All My Money in the 
Great Depression and All I Got Was This Room)"
(2012) - Adam Parker Smith

"Furthur" (2012) - DAZE

The upper levels of The Andrew Freedman Home, however, remained virulently derelict. On the third and fourth floors, broken windows let in rain and snow, causing paint to peel and ceilings to collapse. Piles of pigeon droppings grew on many surfaces. Evidence of squatters filled empty rooms, including pornographic magazines and VHS tapes. Other rooms were taken over by unsanctioned graffiti. One was carpeted in dead Christmas trees. These sections of the building were essentially an uncontrolled ruin, albeit one with delicate curtains still hanging on windows and barber chairs waiting for customers. A visiting artist who spent a night at the home in early 2012 was handed "a two-foot-long machete," according to the New York Times, in case she "came across anyone who broke in during the night."

In December 2012, the first floor of this divided home was once again opened to the public. This time, it was offered up as a bed and breakfast named Freedman on the Concourse, a "charming ten room guest house" located "just 20 minutes from New York's Times Square," according to the Mid-Bronx Senior Citizens Council.  At their "delightful, 1920s themed lodging facility," overnight guests can drink in a "vintage speakeasy lounge," run and hide "on our expansive lawns," and sleep on furniture reclaimed from the bedrooms of original residents. Rates start at $175. Rooms are still available for Valentines Day.


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For other photo essays about art installations that engage historic, damaged New York City spaces, view essays from The Newtown Creek Armada (2012),  The Boatel (2011), House of Cards (2010), This Building has a Story (2010) and The Encampment (2007). No Longer Empty currently has an exhibit titled How Much Do I Owe You on view at an abandoned bank building in Long Island City.

Second Floor Hallway

Christmas Storage

Barber Shop

Doctor's Office

Carpeted Bedroom

Third Floor Hallway

Empty Bedroom

Left Behind

Squatter's Collection

Plastic Wrapped Bedroom

Lace Curtains

Broken Frame

Kingsbridge: Substation No. 3

October 28th 2009 -

If the Harlem River is "New York's forgotten waterfront" then Substation No. 3 is one of the most forsaken places in New York City. Situated on the Bronx shores of the Harlem River, few references can be found to its history, its architect or its purpose. Unlike the well documented Substation No. 10 in Inwood, Substation No. 3 is not even mentioned in the exhaustive Harlem River study written by Columbia's historic preservation program. Just one historic reference to its existence can be found online: an unpublished photograph in the NY Public Library archives, culled from a 1926 collection titled "The Pageant of America - Volume 4: The March of Commerce."

Substation No. 3, also known as the Kingsbridge Substation, is a simple structure. Two stories in height, it is constructed from utilitarian red brick. Inside, two large skylights loom over an open hall. Exposed to the elements, the substation's interior is in relatively poor shape compared to Substation No. 10. Heavy equipment is collapsing into the basement.

Perhaps the most striking thing about this anonymous structure are the numerous objects found inside that indicate a family recently called it home. Luggage, blankets, medication and a toothbrush are tidily arranged around the substation alongside the belongings of several children: stuffed animals, a baseball glove, story books. Like the haunting Victim Services center in Staten Island, these objects hint at a bleak, unwritten history.

Open Skylights

Substation Interior

Layers of Industry

Skater and Toothbrush

Smiling Elephant

Boa and Bunny

"It's All About ME!"

Chopin and Champagne

Flammable Material

To the Basement

The Lower Depths

Arches

Imminent Collapse

The Bronx Swamp

August 31st, 2009 -

The Bronx Swamp is an abandoned, flooded railroad line below the streets of Mott Haven. Its waters are a bright and unnatural green, the color of antifreeze. It is home to birds, rats, raccoons and mosquitoes, and has been used as a dumping ground for years. One local told the Daily New Yorker that "dead animals and a human body" were found in the swamp, while the Mott Haven Herald reports that the "foul odor" rising from the swamp's "plastic bags, broken beer bottles, planks of decaying wood, and abandoned basketballs" has forced residents to consider moving out of the neighborhood. The city acknowledges the Bronx Swamp is a health risk - the Department of Health & Mental Hygiene regularly sprays it with larvacide to curb the spread of mosquitoes potentially infected with the West Nile Virus.

The railroad line underneath the waters of the Bronx Swamp was "formally abandoned" in 2004 by the CSX Corporation, according to the NY Daily News, but - as one resident stated in The Epoch Times - "I've lived here for 17 years and the water's been there just as long." Today, the swamp is scheduled for a major cleanup. It is currently being drained of "more than 150,000 gallons of stagnant water," according to the NY Times. After draining, bulldozers will remove its assorted debris. However, the city has been unable to locate the current owners of the Bronx Swamp and so, as the NY Times states, "the fate of the land remains unclear."

Above the Swamp

Backyard Access

Looking Down to the Cut

Antifreeze Green

At the End of the Swamp

Abandoned Railroad Property

Down in the Swamp

Tunnel Vision

The Bronx Swamp

Port Morris - Iron, Steel and Rust

February 17, 2009 -

Port Morris is a Bronx industrial neighborhood covered in rust. Abandoned train tracks run overhead. A burnt-out gas station sits underneath the highway. And on the waterfront, a neglected Richard Serra sculpture is slowly rusting into the snow near an empty ferry terminal.

Between 1923 and 1969, the East 134th Street Ferry Terminal launched ferryboats out to North Brother Island and Rikers Island, according to "Over and Back, The History of Ferryboats in NY Harbor." Visitors for Typhoid Mary, who died in quarantine on North Brother Island in 1938, caught their boat here. During the same era, in 1932, the NY Times reported that "one of the worst marine-industrial accidents of the city's history" happened just offshore, when the old steamship Observation was "blown to pieces... blown to bits." According to "The Bronx: In Bits and Pieces" by Bill Twomey, the Observation "was only a few ship-lengths from shore when the boiler exploded, sinking the ship and killing 72 people on board, including the captain. Most of the dead were ironworkers who paid ten cents each for that fateful ride."

In a fitting and unintentional tribute to these forgotten ironworkers, a huge welded steel Richard Serra sculpture now rests just a few yards from their watery grave, facing the long abandoned ferry terminal. A welded nameplate inside labels it as "Bellamy" - a truly monumental piece of art worth millions of dollars. According to Man of Steel, a New Yorker article from 2002, "Bellamy" is "the spiral that Serra had named after the late Richard Bellamy, his close friend and early dealer." The sculpture was shown at the Venice Biennial before being exhibited by the Gagosian Gallery in 2001, where "one young couple got permission to be married in Bellamy." Fittingly, an article in Art Forum describes "Bellamy" as "an apt monument to the no longer living."

Despite its international acclaim, "Bellamy" is now hidden behind an old corrugated metal shed on the East River waterfront. It has been bleeding rust outdoors for at least three years, when it was used to stage a 2006 guerrilla art installation titled "Invisible Graffiti." It may have been outside even longer, according to a 2005 NY Sun article which claims Richard Serra is "storing" his sculptures in the Bronx. Like the rest of Port Morris, it could soon rust away entirely.

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For other photos from this expedition, visit Bluejake and Mercurialn. Follow-up stories about this sculpture can be seen at greg.org and at archeologie du futur. In September 2010, this photo essay was featured by The New York Times in an article titled "Richard Serra Sculpture Rusts in Bronx Yard" which included one of my photos and an interview.