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Loyal B&Y reader Steven Sidwell kindly passed along a 1998 story that enlightened us regarding an interim chapter in the life of New York's Martha Washington Hotel.
In those days, the hotel had become primarily a single-room-occupancy establishment, peopled mostly by older women of limited means. At the time the story was written, the hotel had only just been opened to male residents (during its heyday, men were only allowed in the restaurant), and tenants at the time insisted it was merely a ruse intended to rid the hotel of its permanent residents, so that it could be renovated and reopened as a tourist hotel.
And it appears those former tenants were right -- the refurbished Martha Washington is today known as the Hotel Thirty Thirty. It is, from all reports, a modest, budget-priced hostelry that welcomes guests of both genders and all nationalities.
I suppose that's progress, but I imagine the Martha Washington of yore as resembling the theatrical boarding house in STAGE DOOR -- with brainy, wisecracking actresses like Ginger Rogers, Eve Arden, and Lucille Ball (and the occasional patrician interloper, like Katherine Hepburn) -- and I kind of wish it still existed in that incarnation.
When I was new to New York, I knew a woman (a friend from college) who resided at a women's residence. When we had plans together, I'd have to wait in the lobby of the building while she was summoned.
That policy was quite old school, even then; it's positively anachronistic now. And yet that women's residence, the Parkside Evangeline Residence, still exists (it's located at 18 Gramercy Park South and is operated, as it was in those days, by the Salvation Army).
That cheers me, somehow.
I hope the current management of the Hotel Thirty Thirty makes known the hotel's heritage; it'd be nice if those who stayed there knew of its previous life as a haven for female travelers.
Posted by brett at 03:33 PM | TrackBack