Girl, Unemployed

Hotel for Forgotten Women

An acrid smell of several coats of white paint overwhelmed me as I walked into my new 115-square-foot Winifred “guest room.” Inside the tight space sat a two-shelf bookcase, a twin bed, a desk, and an odd sink with a mirrored medicine cabinet. But outside my window, the world opened up. Crowded skyscrapers hung above my bed like a living picture frame chronicling the changing days: steel frames against colorful faded bricks, mixed metals, and glass windows. Wooden water towers stood on rooftops, and clouds of white smoke rose from sewers and networks of pipes along the streets and buildings.

The city’s newness juxtaposed the antiquity I’d left behind in Italy. If a third of my life had already been lived, I hoped I would eventually become like one of those significant old buildings I’d left behind in Europe comprising grand additions from every era—ancient Greek, Roman, Gothic, Renaissance. Unemployment was one of the many influences that would build the story of my life. Just a step, not even a whole staircase, a floor, or a hallway—but it could help contribute toward a grand building. Without unemployment, my life would not have abruptly stopped, tail-spinning me around in a different and opposite direction. I knew that there had to be a clue somewhere. There just had to be some providential reason my life had turned upside down.

“There was a Mr. Winifred. In fact, there were two,” read one of the yellow forms we received during our tour of The Winifred after the hot and sticky summer.

“Follow me, Winifreds,” said an older woman with frizzy gray hair and a walkie-talkie around her waist. “As you can see,” she pointed to a tag on her breast, “my name is Agnes.” She handed out laminated nametags with a pin. “Please find yours, then pass around the rest. You will need these upon every arrival.”

A group of ten of us filed in a jumbled line—the mother hen’s newest little chickadees. Tick-tock went the antique grandfather clock as we entered a stuffy mahogany library overlooking Thirty-Fourth Street.

Agnes pointed to a portrait of an elderly aristocrat sitting above a fireplace lined in brass finishes. “William B. Winifred—ahem,” she coughed to clear her throat. “And his brother were the first cousins of Rowland H. Macy, the senior partner of R.H. Macy and Co., as in Macy’s, the famous department store down the street, and Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parades. When William B. Winifred died, he willed his entire fortune to build apartments for women.” She pointed to a quote published in a July 1922 article in The New York Tribune. “The apartments shall not be conducted for profit but solely for the purpose of providing unmarried working women with homes and wholesome food at a small cost to them and, in deserving cases, without cost to them.’”

I didn’t believe my twelve hundred dollars a month in rent for a 115-square-foot guest room was at a small cost, but whatever.

Agnes fiddled with her beeping walkie-talkie while regurgitating the last of Mr. Winifred’s regal magnificence. Escorting us to the front desk, she waved her hands at a wall of 1920s mailboxes with tiny keyholes and peek-a-boo windows. Then she waved at the sign-in desk, where a Caribbean man supervised guest check-ins. “We believe in romance and traditions of the past. True to times of courtship and waiting for the right gentleman caller to arrive, men still aren’t allowed past the first floor.”

A devious smile accompanied the gentleman’s hand wave in an almost perfect illustration of a fox guarding the henhouse. And then I felt a punch in the gut. To go back in time to the starting line meant I was much farther behind Kit than I previously thought.

“But Winifreds,” Agnes emphasized her next statement with an index finger triumphantly waving in the air. “Keep in mind that men can join you in the first floor’s Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich-themed alcoves. They were once used as beau parlors—a place for wooing potential suitors. Also,” she paused, us coming to a halt at Greta Garbo’s pencil-thin eyebrows. “The ballroom is to the right of this hallway, and the practice room is to the left. While not as famous as The Barbizon, where other names like Rita Hayworth, Grace Kelley, and Joan Crawford lived as rising stars, The Winifred’s accommodations are similar to such hotels for women built during the turn of the century…” Agnes suddenly paused again. “Is there a problem, Jessica?” Her breath made it across a few Winifreds until it hit me.

I clutched my backpack tight and froze at her sight, eventually surrendering to my obvious grimace. “Oh, you know—the beau parlors. Just wondering. Is there a curfew, too?”

A few of the Winifreds that seemed Missy’s age laughed at its preposterousness.

“You have until midnight in the beau parlors,” Agnes quipped in a stern tone, turning another knob on her walkie-talkie. “Got it? Men will need to leave by then as well. Anything else?”

Her last words felt like a reprimand.

More Winifreds laughed at each other and whispered about their internships, fashion week, and their late schedules. “Midnight? Dates don’t even start until then. This is New York. The city that never sleeps.”

“Winifreds, shush!” Agnes snapped her head at us. “Once the tour concludes, you will not get another. Now, let’s resume.”

Passing the mirrored walls, I marveled at our next stop near two early twentieth-century telephone booths with a blue bell logo and white wings emphasizing ‘Long Distance Telephone.’

Agnes cleared her throat. “A ninety-year-old red brick building with limestone bordering, construction of The Winifred was put on hold during World War I, finally opening its doors in November 1923, three years after women gained the right to vote.”

She pointed to framed photographs of women in white floor-length dresses—one or two in polka-dots. I got lost in their distinctive flower pins, which I’d also discovered at Last Chance. The pins recalled the famous Chanel Camelia brooch, a trend duplicated and resurrected for generations. The Winifred was not the only artifact that tied us, the women of the past and the present, together. When I stared at the photographs, I felt like a copycat of a copycat, finally assessing the original.

“Winifreds, it will be tight, but try to keep up.” Agnes punched the elevator button. We crammed in shoulder-to-shoulder, the aged elevator dragging us higher as its heavy weight jolted us together. “With thirteen floors and three-hundred-seventy-three single-bed guestrooms, The Winifred’s most beautiful asset is its rooftop terrace overlooking Manhattan north, south, east, and west.”

The sun’s early fall glow emanated across the city like a spotlight, so no matter how broke you were when you checked in, here was your hopeful, million-dollar view. Red, white, and blue luxurious cruise ships slowly trudged through the Hudson River. Inhaling, then exhaling, I smelled a calming aroma of freshwater mixed with saltwater. If I stared at the sky long enough, the ends of the earth appeared to bend into a sphere along with the surrounding towering buildings, their sharp edges fading into the softness of the clouds above. Later, I’d watch the One World Trade Center under construction in the same spot—the southeast corner—where other women no doubt watched the original World Trade towers piling up—and then sadly falling down. The Empire State Building and the iconic New Yorker Hotel's bright red sign were closest on the horizon. I imagined them both lit up for the first time.

The views below differed. I noticed transient, graffitied blocks near a developing area called Hudson Yards. Thirty-Fourth Street appeared to sit between another one of those “up-and-coming” areas between Ninth and Tenth Avenues. Once again, I thought of my own transitional life and how I, too, stood in between things.

I raised my hand. “Are we in Chelsea, Hell’s Kitchen, Midtown, or all three?”

Agnes stretched her legs, leaning down to pull up the white stockings that failed to reach above her knees. “Well, the dividing line, the end of Chelsea, is Thirty-Fourth Street. But technically, the heart of Chelsea is the Twenties and Teens. Hell’s Kitchen starts at Thirty-Fourth Street but doesn’t really start until the Forties.”

A brief east wind nipped at my naked shoulders. I surveyed my surroundings, noticing an adjacent black building Agnes pointed to where 1930s rowhouses once stood. Below, the traffic and pedestrians amassed near The Winifred’s entrance, where an American flag hung over its doors, a prominent symbol of freedom, equality, and hope.

“Did you see her?” One of the young interns whispered and discreetly pointed while I tried to breathe over her perfume with strong hints of peonies and lily-of-the-valley. “Gloria? In the elevator?”

I followed the intern’s pointing finger, where a woman with wrinkly leathered skin, silver hair, and aviator sunglasses sunned on a lawn chair. She wore a black biker jacket with extra zippers and swigged a tall boy in a brown paper bag while balancing a cigarette in the other hand.

“Her family just dropped her off one day, never to return,” the intern said. “She once had sex with Mick Jagger. She tells everybody that.”

I couldn’t wait for the interns to experience setbacks. Feeling a sudden solidarity with this older Gloria, I chimed in. “Everybody once had sex with Mick Jagger. He tells everybody that.”

“Winifreds!” Agnes snapped again. Her spit flew through a piece of frizz floating in front of her face, along with the wind. Then, her eyeline followed ours until it got to Gloria. “Ms. Gloria Grace…” Agnes waited, scratching her head. She advanced closer to the corner of the rooftop so that her round, bloated belly was comically aligned with Gloria’s head.

Poor Gloria. She seemed so lonely and sad. When life doesn’t go as planned, there are detours. When life really doesn’t go as planned, there’s Gloria. But she was unphased and mechanically took another drag of her cigarette at the speed of a snail while a thick pile of ashes lingered at the end.

“Ms. Grace, I hate to ask again.” Agnes widened her stance, her orthopedic shoes sliding against the concrete roof. She lowered her head. “But please abstain from throwing your cigarette butts on passersby below today; The Winifred thanks you.” Agnes fanned away the loose frizz falling on her face. “As you could have guessed, there has been discussion of no longer permitting rooftop cigarettes, so I’m sure your cooperation would go a rather long way.”

A few chaotic car horns cried out as an ambulance siren neared. Gloria took another drag as more ashes accumulated at the end of her cigarette. Then, she blew a puff of smoke into Agnes’s face.

Rooted in her etiquette or “traditions of the past,” Agnes kept her composure. Her eyes remained closed. She held her breath. Until she finally spoke. “Very well, then.” Agnes resumed her steps toward us. “That just about concludes your rooftop tour, Winifreds. Our final stop is down below in the dining hall. Remember, your boarding includes two meals daily: breakfast and dinner. If you prove that work keeps you from dinner, we will pack a lunch bag for you instead. But again, that must count as your second meal of the day. You must make arrangements no later than six in the evening prior.”

Gloria, as I would later learn from rooftop jaunts, was loud—nonstop loud. Her voice sounded deep and crackly, like someone who’d either spent a great deal of her life smoking or else a great deal of her life yelling over the speakers at concerts. Her presence on my first day’s Winifred entrance was a wake-up call: We were all either the lifers or the potential lifers. The sentiment later became punctuated by high-pitched screeching sounds in foreign yelps from another Winifred on my floor. After sustaining more screeching yells one day, I finally decided to call the front desk. “Okay,” they relented. “We’ll send somebody up. You’re on the sixth floor, right?” The very calm monotone of the voice indicated that the screams were routine as usual. And then I wondered: is this what happens when we don’t hurry and partner up with one of those gentleman callers in the beau parlors?

When I first checked in to The Winifred, I thought they “temporarily” housed students interning in the city or graduate students starting classes for the first time, as well as young women from all over America and around the world who’d moved to New York for work. The Winifred website said that accounted for seventy percent of their occupants. However, after just a few days of occupancy, I discovered that welcome mats and wreaths decorated some guestroom doors. I also learned some women called The Winifred their home for years—troubled women like Gloria whose families did not want them or did not know what to do with them. And here I was, suddenly one of them.