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The Graham Home for Old Ladies
Graham Home for Old Ladies

Some might say that the name, The Graham Home for Old Ladies, is an improvement on its predecessor, the Brooklyn Society for the Relief of Respectable Aged Indigent Females. It’s certainly more to the point. When the building at 320 Washington opened in 1851, it housed 90 women from Brooklyn who were over 60 and could “bring satisfactory testimonials of the propriety of her conduct and the respectability of her character.”

Eventually, the home ran out of money and sat vacant until it was turned into the Bull Shippers Plaza Motor Inn, an establishment where conduct and respectability, not to mention AARP membership, were no longer a prerequisite. The Inn operated as a brothel by "ladies by the hour who brought only scanty-panty testimonials of propriety.”*

In 2001, the building was bought and turned into condos.

  • The scanty panty line comes courtesy of the now defunct Fort Greene Newsletter.
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