New York, NY - Urban Archive

South of Union Square

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All the Single Ladies: The Margaret Louisa YWCA

By the late 19 century, not only were unmarried working-class women toiling in factories, mills, shops, and various trades, but middle-class women were employed in new white-collar jobs as clerks, secretaries, stenographers, journalists, and telephone operators. An 1879 report of the Association for Inquiry into the Condition of Professional and Business Women estimated that there were about 50,000 women pursuing “professional, literary, and artistic pursuits” in and within 50 miles of New York, while there was only accommodation for 500. The need for housing was so great that the LCU and similar organizations were turning away three applicants for everyone they could house.

By

New-York Historical Society

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Y.W.C.A. Building, Margaret Louisa Home

Y.W.C.A. Building, Margaret Louisa Home

The Young Women’s Christian Association of New York City constructed the first new building designed specifically to house single working women. Completed in 1891 at 14-16 East 16th Street, the six-story Margaret Louisa Home was described as “a temporary home for the Protestant self-supporting woman who is a stranger within the gates of Gotham.” The requirements for acceptance to the house show the continued emphasis on moral character: “Those desiring admission \[must] provide a name, occupation, church denomination, and the name and address of a reliable person…”

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Y.W.C.A. Building, Margaret Louisa Home

Y.W.C.A. Building, Margaret Louisa Home

Thirty years on, the house rules were as strict as those in the earlier “moral homes.” Rent was payable in advance, no cooking or washing was allowed on the premises, electricity was “extinguished at 11 o’clock,” and “the house is closed at 11 pm; those liable to be detained later must report at the Superintendent’s office in advance.”

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Y.W.C.A. Building, Margaret Louisa Home

Y.W.C.A. Building, Margaret Louisa Home

The Margaret Louisa was a new type of building, much larger than any earlier home (it could accommodate up to 110 women). Still, it was consciously designed, under the leadership of the all-female association board, to “have that indescribable, indispensable something—sympathetic home influence.”

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Y.W.C.A. Building, Margaret Louisa Home

Y.W.C.A. Building, Margaret Louisa Home

Contemporary descriptions of the public spaces note the walls were “painted in warm, soft colors which add greatly to the charm of the finish,” while “the parlors are tastefully furnished, with engravings, a piano…reading lamps…all of which give a peculiar home-like air to these surroundings.”

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Y.W.C.A. Building, Margaret Louisa Home

Y.W.C.A. Building, Margaret Louisa Home

In contrast, the bedrooms at the Margaret Louisa were quite small and furnished plainly. Photos from about 1907 show a dormitory bedroom crowded with three iron bedsteads, small wash basins, a bureau, and a shelf. While the single-bedroom photo has similar furnishings, it appears staged as an attractive, feminine, middle-class space, a sort of “aspirational” bedroom with a vase of flowers, pictures on the bureau, and personal items pinned up behind a shelf, which also has assorted knick knacks.

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Y.W.C.A. Building, Margaret Louisa Home

Y.W.C.A. Building, Margaret Louisa Home

More occupants meant a lower cost per boarder, which might explain the small size of the bedrooms and their spartan furniture. However, it is interesting to contrast the austere nature of the small, almost institutional bedrooms, with the attractively decorated public rooms—rooms where genteel practices like reading or playing the piano were encouraged.

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Y.W.C.A. Building, Margaret Louisa Home

Y.W.C.A. Building, Margaret Louisa Home

Even though the residents, for the most part, were middle-class, professional women—teachers, artists, and journalists—in form, furnishings, and rules, the Margaret Louisa continued the traditions of the “Moral Home.”

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