The year was 1923, with the decadent decade already in full roar and the crash of Wall Street still six years off.
“Flaming Youth,” a movie starring Colleen Moore as a saucy flapper, was playing in the theaters. A patent was submitted for the traffic signal. Future Hall of Famer Lou Gehrig took the field inside the newly-opened Yankee Stadium, just three years after the nation’s women received the right to vote.
It’s been 100 years since some of those ambitious young ladies found a new home: On Nov. 15,1923, the doors opened at 419 W. 34th St. in Manhattan to welcome independent young working women looking to live on their own, as more and more of them were doing at that time.
The Webster Apartments were born.
Brothers Charles and Josiah Webster had come to New York to join their cousin R.H. Macy at the namesake Manhattan store he opened in 1858 at 14th St.and Sixth Ave., with the business becoming wildly successful along with the family members. It was Charles Webster, who died in 1916, who left behind the bulk of his money to benefit the city’s single women.
Webster directed the money go specifically toward creation of the apartments “to generally improve the conditions of unmarried working women and particularly to establish, maintain and conduct apartments in the Borough of Manhattan, City of New York, for occupation by unmarried working women regardless of their religious belief or nationality and wherein they may find comfortable and attractive homes,” according to his will.
The 14-story building was built between Ninth and 10th Aves., a short walk from what was by then Macy’s flagship store in Herald Square. According to the apartments’ website, there were “between 30 and 40 sales clerks from Macy’s alone living here” in its first year, but the inhabitants weren’t only Jazz Age shop girls.
Edith Giddens lived at the Webster in her early 30s, from about 1929 to 1931, first moving in while she worked at the main branch of the New York Public Library typing up index cards for the card catalog, said her granddaughter Diana Bryan Quinn of Virginia Beach.
“She used to talk about the Webster as if royalty lived there, like it was a special club,” said Quinn, 68. “Those two years she was there she had a good time. She made friends there and you could tell she really liked being there. It sounded like a safe place, too.”
The Webster was impressive, especially for young women new to New York and living on their own for the first time. The building originally had a dance and lecture hall, a lounge and a library in addition to the 360 bedrooms, according to an environmental impact statement written by city and state agencies before development in nearby Hudson Yards began. There was also an on-site dietician, nurse, chef and housekeeper.
Giddens, born in Phillipsburg, N.J., moved to New York after her mother died, said Quinn, and met her husband on a blind date while living at the Webster. By 1932 Giddens was married and having her first child, but her time at the Webster Apartments remained a cherished part of her life, said her granddaughter.
After working at the library, Giddens took a job at the American Museum of Natural History, where she hand-lettered signs for displays, said her granddaughter.
“She probably didn’t earn much,” said Quinn. However, that didn’t stop her grandmother from adopting the styles of the time, as evidenced in photos of her taken at the Webster Apartments with marcelled hair and high heels.
“She was buying clothes and looking nice when she was single in New York City.”
The Webster came fairly late in the era of housing created for working women, which began in New York during the 1860s, said historian Nina E. Harkrader.
“There begins to be questions about where are these young women going to live, because society at this point has very specific roles for women, to grow up under the auspices of your parents and get married and have a home and have children.”
The earlier housing was traditional in nature, giving the inhabitants a structured, sheltered existence, but eventually more modern options emerged, said Harkrader,
“Right before you get the Webster you get something called the Business Women’s Hotel,” she explained. “Some of this is pushing back against the restrictions.”
For nearly 100 years the building housed women exclusively. Bathrooms and showers were still shared, meals continued to be included in the cost of rent, and gentlemen callers were still forbidden to go above the first floor.
The Webster Apartments as an organization moved temporarily to Lexington Ave. in March, where they occupy the female-only 16th floor of FOUND Study, a co-ed building of students and interns. In May the nonprofit bought a hotel in downtown Brooklyn for $42 million that will eventually become its permanent home.
Many of the inhabitants of the original building made the move to FOUND, said Tara Scott, director of admissions, guest services, marketing and business development of the Webster Apartments, and while they are currently more focused on housing students and interns, young working women will still be able to call Webster home.
According to the nonprofit’s website “… this new building allows Webster to provide a safe and healthy environment to live, connect, and network with like-minded individuals.” Rooms ranged in price from $2,800 a month for a standard single room with private bathroom, microwave and mini-fridge to $3,150 for a large deluxe single, which includes a kitchenette, a steep increase from the starting cost of $1,100 in 2019.
The historic building on W. 34th St. was sold in the spring for $52.5 million to Educational Housing Services, which also provides dorm-like accommodations for students and interns in Brooklyn Heights, the Financial District and Williamsburg.
The issue of affordable housing for young women is just as much an issue now as it was when the Webster and its predecessors were built, said Harkrader.
“When the world changes with the Depression and World War II a lot of these places go and they don’t come back,” she said. “What I find fascinating is that in many ways things have not changed.
“It’s not like we solved the problem,” said Harkrader.
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