The Wartburg Adult Care Community is a non-profit, Lutheran organization located in Mount Vernon, New York that provides a continuum of care to older adults through residential and community-based programs and services. The Wartburg was founded in 1866 as an orphanage and farm school and began serving older adults in 1898. As the foster care system took hold in the mid-1900s, the Wartburg gradually phased out the orphanage and by 1979, its focus was solely on serving the elderly.
History
The Wartburg Orphans’ Farm School was established in 1866 by a Lutheran minister, Reverend William Passavant, with an initial gift of $30,000 from New Yorksugar refinerPeter Moller. Originally, Moller had planned to use the funds to erect a lavish memorial for his son, whom he had lost in the American Civil War. However, Reverend Passavant, who had previously founded The Orphan’s Home and Farm School in Zelienople, Pennsylvania, convinced Moller of the need for a similar orphanage in New York to help the great number of children left fatherless by the Civil War. Moller agreed and donated the $30,000 to help fund the new orphanage. With advisement from Reverend G.C. Holls, headmaster of the Zelienople orphanage and Sister Elizabeth, a nun affiliated with a similar orphanage in Rochester, Pennsylvania, Reverend Passavant searched for an appropriate property for the new orphanage. Ultimately, they settled on 125 acres of land in Pelham, New York purchased from The Lutheran Committee for Charitable Concerns. On a visit to the property, Passavant was believed to comment that “This is something like the site of The Wartburg where Luther translated the New Testament,” of which Pastor Holls, later hired as the first director of The Wartburg, replied with “Then we will call it The Wartburg.” The Wartburg was originally incorporated under the name “Deaconess Institution of the State of New York.” However, in 1884, a state charter was obtained, officially naming it “The Wartburg Orphans’ Farm School of the Evangelical Lutheran Church”. In 2011, the Wartburg was chosen to receive a $27.6 million grant to fund two new buildings on campus: the short term-rehab/adult day facility and 61 units of supportive housing. The short-term rehabilitation center will be designed around the “neighborhood” model. Adjacent to this building will be the new adult day care building.
