With Hahnemann closed, its owner, Joel Freedman, lists Rittenhouse home for $3.5M

With Hahnemann University Hospital closed for business and its last inpatient discharged, Joel Freedman, the CEO of the company that owned the Philadelphia hospital, has also begun to shed his personal local real estate holdings.

Freedman’s Philadelphia home, 2100-02 Locust St. near Rittenhouse Square, is listed for sale for nearly $3.5 million, his spokesperson said Thursday. The sale was initially reported by the Philadelphia Business Journal.

The listing of the nearly 5,500-square-foot property comes just months after Freedman announced his plans to shut down the Center City hospital, which he purchased from Tenet Healthcare Corp. last year for $170 million, in a deal that included St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children. Freedman, the CEO of American Academic Health System LLC, would later tell The Inquirer that he was optimistic at the time that he could turn Hahnemann around, despite its 14 straight years of financial losses.

Shortly after the hospitals’ sale, Freedman, a California investment banker, and his family transitioned to life in Philadelphia. His son enrolled at Friends Select, a private Quaker school, and in April 2018, Freedman and his wife, Stella, purchased the Rittenhouse Square home for nearly $2.6 million. Records show that a nearby parking space at the Wanamaker House was included in the deal.

In an interview in April with The Inquirer, Freedman said the financial problems at Hahnemann were much worse than he expected. That same month, Los Angeles property records show, Freedman and his wife purchased a Hermosa Beach property in California for $6.8 million.

Freedman also owned another property in Los Angeles, records show.

Freedman’s announcement this summer about Hahnemann’s closure drew ire in Philadelphia and beyond, with even Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders weighing in at a rally to save the 495-bed facility. Since then, the emergency room has stopped taking patients. Its more than 550-slot residency program has gone up for sale. Meanwhile, St. Christopher’s, which is not closing, drew interest from Drexel University and Tower Health, who agreed to buy the children’s hospital out of bankruptcy for $50 million.

A spokesperson for Freedman said he lives in California, though the spokesperson was not aware whether he does so full time.

Freedman’s rowhouse on Locust Street is listed as a “significant" building in the Rittenhouse-Fitler Historic District. It has been cited twice by Philadelphia’s Department of Licenses and Inspections within the last 15 months for having work done on a property in a historic district without a permit, records show. A letter submitted to a Philadelphia Historical Commission committee earlier this year said some of the windows had been replaced.

According to the Zillow listing for the property, 2100-02 Locust St. is a five-bedroom, six-bathroom corner property that was “completely renovated in 2018 ”to reflect “masterful design” and “modern luxury.” It features an elevator, crown molding, and a grand, sweeping staircase. Known as the “Henry House,” the listing says, it was designed in 1889 by Robert Gray Kennedy, a Scottish-born architect. Its historic district designation lists it as a “Victorian Eclectic/Renaissance Revival”-style house. It is listed as significant because of its “fine example of its style.”

Listing photos for the property show a largely white and gray interior — a popular design trend in recent years. An older, outdated listing for the property shows it with wood floors. The grand staircase was wood-stained, rather than white.

Million-dollar listings have shown increased strength in the Philadelphia market in recent years, as the city’s housing market has remained red-hot and wealthy baby boomers have exchanged homes on the Main Line for Philadelphia property. Between April and June of this year, 40 million-dollar homes were sold in Philadelphia.

Freedman’s home is listed with Frank DeFazio of the Center City Team, which is affiliated with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Fox & Roach.