Category:St. Francis Residence 125 East 24th Street

English: The St. Francis Residence I, located at 125 East 24th Street between Lexington and Park Avenues in the Rose Hill neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, was built in the 19th Century in the Romanesque Revival style as the home of William Francis Oakley. Oakley died in November 1888, and the building became the Beechwood Hotel, a residential hotel aimed at the carriage trade. In 1937, the League of American Writers pruchased it and turned it into a school for writers. By 1951, the building was a Single Room Occupancy hotel with a Chinese laundry on the street floor. In 1980, Franciscan friars from the St. Francis of Assisi Monastery on West 31st Street, through their fundraising organization, the Friends of the Poor, bought the building for $550,000 and converted it into the St, Francis Residence to provide a home for the homeless; two years later they bought 155 West 22nd Street for a second St. Francis Residence, and then another in 1987 at 148 Eighth Avenue between 17th and 18th Streets. The residences provides social and psychiatric services to their occupants as well as art workshops; a tenants council participates in the running of the shelters. (Sources: "From Society Pages to Homeless Shelter-- The Beechwood 125 E. 24th Street" and "St. Francis Friends of the Poor")