Morning rush, 1896. The Third Avenue elevated train clatters into 23rd Street. A young woman trudges down the iron stairs, plucks her skirts just clear of the sidewalk, and joins the torrent of men in dark suits and women in white blouses converging on Madison Square. It’s taken a lot of convincing to get to this first day of work. Her parents know the neighborhood as a den of the disreputable rich, where bright new mansions are interspersed with the concert saloons that the Reverend Parkhurst is so bent on expunging. A few blocks up is Madison Square Garden, with its boxers and opera singers. (“Tonight and Friday evening will be Wagner nights,” the Times warned. “Every night there will be beer.”) And an office is no place for a girl either. Her father should know, having spent decades hunched over an oak desk in a shipping company’s lightless front room along with a dozen other sallow men.
But everything is different now. A few years ago, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company built itself an 11-story palazzo at the corner of Madison Avenue and East 23rd Street, and it’s practically a billboard for respectability. Men—clerks, accountants, executives, cashiers—enter through one portal. An even larger group of typists, stenographers, and switchboard operators flows through another: “Metropolitan Belles,” the company calls its young unmarried female employees, with their brisk step and pinned-up hair. There’s no risk of their bumping into a man, the young woman has assured her mother, because elevators, hallways, and lunchrooms are segregated with monastic strictness. She won’t mention the roof terrace, where the sexes mingle during breaks.
This story is from the April 26 - May 9, 2021 edition of New York magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the April 26 - May 9, 2021 edition of New York magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Unmasking Diddy
The rap mogul shook off decades of rumored bad behavior with wholesome PR revamps. Now the allegations against him are his legacy.
Staging Sufjan
How playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury turned a classic indie-rock album into a Justin Peck-choreographed dance piece that's now Broadway bound.
Justin Kuritzkes Serves an Ace
With his first movie script for the erotic tennis drama Challengers, he has gone from struggling playwright to in-demand screenwriter.
To Brooklyn, by Way of Paris and Rome
A whirlwind week with Dior creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri as she stages the brand's first New York runway show in a decade.
A Burlesque Family at Home
Showbiz couple Angie Pontani and Brian Newman’s high-spirited Marine Park house.
A Bistro With Shish Barak
Huda impressively balances its many influences.
THE 'DEBATE ME BRO
Mehdi Hasan's aggressive interviewing style landed him a Sunday show on MSNBC. Until he started talking about Palestine.
THE MAN WHO GOSSIPED TOO MUCH
For almost two decades, JOHN NELSON anonymously published blind items skewering the Hollywood elite on the blog CRAZY DAYS AND NIGHTS. Then his identity was revealed in the midst of a messy affair.
TODD BLANCHE IS A SURPRISINGLY COMPETENT LAWYER. AND HE'S ON TRACK TO KEEP HIS CLIENT OUT OF JAIL UNTIL THE ELECTION. IN DEFENSE OF TRUMP
TODD BLANCHE WAS looking for his man. Or it could be a woman, but probably not.
Self: Emma Alpern
In Outer Space Why do so many women believe their bodies are controlled by the moon?