By: Denis Cyr
The Historic House Trust of New York City was formed in 1989 as a public-private partnership with the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation to preserve the historic houses located within New York City parks. This trust is not widely known about but is of vital importance.
The Trust works with the individual houses to restore and promote the houses as a means of educating residents and visitors about the social, economic, and political history of New York City and cast urban history in a new light. The Trust includes 23 historic sites, with 18 operating as museums and attracting 729,000 annual visitors.
Some of the most interesting historic homes include Edgar Allan Poe Cottage in the Bronx, The Conference House in Staten Island, The Little Red Lighthouse in NYC, The Wyckoff Farmhouse Museum and The Old Stone House in Brooklyn and Grace Mansion.
There are actually 23 lucky New Yorkers ho get to live in these incredible historic relics, rent free in return for being the caretaker. The NY Post spoke to Roy Fox, who for the last 30 years has been the caretaker for King Manor House, an 11-acre historic landmark in Jamaica, Queens.
While he does not earn a salary, Fox also doesn’t have to pay a dime to live in one of the biggest houses in one of the most expensive cities in the world., the NY Post reported.
“It’s payment for all the years I’ve done, doing nothing,” Fox joked of his role in the 29-room, 22,000-square-foot historic mansion.
In the late 1980s, Fox’s then-wife had a job restoring the carousel at Brooklyn Bridge Park. Her boss tipped her off that the parks commissioner was looking for someone to live in the King Manor, and the rest is history.
“It was such a New York story,” said Fox of the serendipity of finding his beloved home. The King Manor home was once owned by Rufus King — one of the five framers of the US Constitution and a vocal abolitionist.
In June the NY Times spoke to the caretaker of the Bartow-Pell Mansion Museum
The Times reported: “It’s like a vacation,” at least compared to life before the virus, Mr. Cruz said on a recent, spotty phone call — the landline in the 1840s home was on the fritz, and cell service can be unreliable on the roughly 2,700-acre grounds of Pelham Bay Park, the largest in New York City.
The Historic House Trust Fund overseas some of the most interesting attractions in NYC, historic landmarks and preservation is vital to American culture