I remember finding the premise of Bosum Buddies — the early 80′s sitcom, where Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari play men dressing as women to live in a women-only apartment complex — preposterous, if only because I couldn’t imagine a women-only apartment complex. As WSJ.com – Rooms for Rent: Maid Service, Hot Meals, No Men reports, one still exists in New York City:
Perhaps the most ancient stereotype about New York is that it is a metropolis of easy virtue. But just a block and a half from this week’s Republican National Convention, the little-known Webster, a fortress-like apartment building with Doric columns and steel doors, defies the darker side of Gotham so often portrayed in movies, literature and popular music.Men are received only in the first-floor drawing room, the library or in the doorless, floral-wallpapered ‘beau parlors.’ One exception: Fathers are allowed upstairs, but only with an escort.
There used to be a number of such residences in New York, most famously the Barbizon Hotel on the Upper East Side, a white-glove establishment for young women including Grace Kelly and Sylvia Plath. Its denizens were often employed by women’s magazines or nearby retailers before they got married and moved out.
‘Aside from these residences, living on your own in New York was impossible to afford because even women who were college graduates were limited to low-paying jobs,’ says Rosalind Rosenberg, a professor of history at New York City’s Barnard College. Women’s residences provided a needed veil of respectability to the notion of an unmarried woman living independently of her family, she says.
By the end of the 1960s, those considerations had withered in importance. Today, apart from some college dorms and women’s residences run by religious organizations, the Webster is one of the last of its breed. “The feminist and sexual revolutions killed them,” says Prof. Rosenberg.