Individual Film Price:

Higher Education Institutions & Government Agency DVD | $49.95
K-12 & Public Libraries DVD | $49.95
Home Video DVD License – Restrictions Apply | $5.95

Precious Places Compilation Price:

This video is available for purchase as part of a Precious Places Community History Project Vol. 10 compilation DVD.
 
Higher Education Institutions & Government Agency DVD | $139.00
K-12 & Public Libraries DVD | $79.00
Home Video DVD License – Restrictions Apply | $20.00

Scribe Video Center Program:

The Precious Places Community History Project is a community oral history project inviting members of the Philadelphia region's many neighborhoods to document the buildings, public spaces, parks, landmarks and other sites that hold the memories of our communities and define where we live. Precious Places teaches the video production process to participating groups, fostering projects authored by those who intimately know the featured neighborhoods.

Film Summary:

The Freedom Theatre is located in a mansion built in 1853 as the home of a beer magnate that was sold at a Sheriff's sale to Shakespearean actor Edwin Forrest. It was later the home of the Moore College of Art and Design. In the 1950's it became the home of Heritage House, a non profit organization established by Dr. Eugene Waymon Jones to provide educational and cultural activities for Black children. It was also the headquarters for the Philadelphia Cotillion Society also founded by Jones. Following Jones' death the building in 1966 became the home of Freedom Theater, headed up by John Allen, sharing space with Heritage House. In 1981 Freedom Theater took over the building. It was billed as Pennsylvania's oldest African American professional theater.

Today the 65,000-square-foot brownstone is dark and in danger of it succumbing to the encroachment of developers ,the expanding footprint of Temple University and extensive deterioration. Once a thriving center for the Black performing arts, in the heart of North Philadelphia's African American community, its future is structurally and fiscally shaky.