My husband Paul, a dedicated Bronx historian and all around brilliant guy, turned me on to a glittering chunk of Formerly history of which I had been unaware.
On the Grand Concourse, the Champs Elysees of the Bronx (the Bronx was formerly a borough with mucho class and clout) sits the Andrew Freedman Home, a facility Freedman, a millionaire himself, endowed in 1924 for the Formerly Rich, or those who grew accustomed to a certain lavish style of life and then suffered financial reversal. According to the New York Times, Freedman’s sister, Isabella, said that the man believed that ”worthy habits and traditions of affluence and refinement deserve recognition and respect.”
Yeah, OK, but do they really deserve to be subsidized? Per the Times, residents were waited upon and cooked for by a gaggle of servants at an almost 2:1 ratio.
“The main floor contained a card room, library, parlor, dining room and related rooms, the interior designed by L. Alavoine & Company, a French decorating concern. The entertaining rooms were as grand as many private clubs of the period, and the guest rooms upstairs compared favorably with the scale and finishes of Park Avenue apartment houses of the time.”
There’s a lot to roll your eyes at here, most obviously the fact that such accommodations were built to house the wealthy and not the poor, the vast majority of whom were likely never as rich as as these (mostly) cigar-chomping fat cats on their brokest day.
But what I find most interesting here is that Freedman felt so strongly that it would be unbearable for the rich to transition into the Formerly Rich, that he earmarked almost his entire $7 million dollar estate to protect them from having to deal with it!
To me, that speaks more to how difficult simply being a Formerly may sometimes be to the specifics of the Formerly. Take Joan Van Ark, for instance. The Knot’s Landing alum is Formerly Hot, if anyone is. No, really, you must look. She underwent the plastic surgery equivalent of the Andrew Freedman House, I can only guess so that she didn’t have to experience life as a Formerly Hot Hollywood actress. Which has gotta suck, in its own ridiculous way, no matter how many worse fates their are in the world.
Here’s another JVA link: I’d simply post the picture but I don’t have the rights.
I conjecture that the more invested you are in your self-definition, the greater lengths you might go to to maintain that self-definition. Still, there are plenty of people who, rather than clinging desperately to the past find a healthy way to change their self-definition so they don’t wind up waiting to die sequestered in a gilded museum on the Grand Concourse or looking like Joan Van Ark!
Happily, most of us never even dip a toe into Joan Van Ark territory, and hopefully never will. And I think the key to weathering such a transition is being able to laugh at your changing life circumstances (hence this blog.) Not that it’s easy, of course.
For a modern-day eye-roller, check out Alexandra Penny’s blog entry about losing everything in the Madoff scheme on the Daily Beast. You won’t come away with much sympathy, mostly because (like the Freedman residents) even wiped out she still has more than you probably do right now and exhibits zero recognition of this fact. Still, one might feel for her as a newly minted Formerly.
December 23, 2008 at 9:20 pm
You gotta be shitting me! The Grand Concourse was the Shampsellisay? My dad grew up there, and I had no idea it was anything special, him always talking about his humble origins. Come to think of it, I’ve never seen the name in print before, or heard anybody mention it.
Guess I should visit some time.
December 23, 2008 at 9:46 pm
I shit you not! Stay tuned for more from my husband, who knows everything there is to know about most things, but especially the Bronx. Designed by the same dude, and until the mid-60s, most parts of the Concourse (which runs a few miles) were peopled with upper middle class folks. That said, the southern part has been humble for longer than that. Now, totally humble.
December 23, 2008 at 10:59 pm
modelled after the Champs Elysee and the now a Nat’l Historic District owing to the unusual concentration of art deco apartment buildings at 730-1000, 1100-1520, 1560, and 851-1675, which are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. many of these buildings feature sunken living rooms, maid’s quarters, parquet floors, dumb waiters, and elaborate mosaics and murals in their lobbies. the coops at 158th (across from the courthouse) still have uniformed doormen and crystal chandeliers in their common areas.
the finest buildings in the borough (outside of Riverdale, of course) were on the Concourse and back in the day, an upwardly mobile family always aspired to an apartment on that charmed boulevard. In its heyday, the boro’s aristocracy–physicians, attorneys, businessmen, and other white collar types– flocked to the Concourse’s choicest buildings–generally located between 158th and approx. 174th Street. Celebrities, too– Babe Ruth took up residence at the Concourse Plaza hotel at 161st Street; Flavor Flav lived at 165th (post PE, pre VH1).
Closer to Fordham Road, the apts become a bit more modest, the facades less ornamented, and the art deco influences much less pronounced. And their occupants have historically been from humbler stations than their brethren to the south. Racial divisions were also evident along the Concourse up until the mid to late 60’s, when the apartments near the courthouse began to turn over, and landlords finally began to rent to Puerto Ricans and African-Americans, who at one time were barred from housing in the area. my boss still remembers the day the first coquito seller appeared on the Concourse–a Jackie Robinson moment for Puerto Ricans in the Bronx.
December 24, 2008 at 4:55 pm
The Alexandra Penney essay(s – yes, there’s more than one) have been a topic of, ahem, free and frank discussion on a writers’ board I belong to. On the one hand, you have to feel for her, if it’s true that she worked her own way up and stashed her money so as not to become the bag-lady-eating-cat-food that haunts the dreams of, well, most of my friends. anyway. On the other hand: The apartment and the studio AND the cottage in West Palm? The horror at having to take the subway for the first time in 30 years? The FORTY white shirts? My sympathy has limits.
December 24, 2008 at 8:00 pm
I know…she’s something else. Total lack of awareness of the rest of the world. I feel for her shock and the destruction of her self-image. Otherwise, the most she’ll get from me is my seat on the subway, should she be standing in front of me. She’s NOT in her 60s.