COLUMBUS AVENUE AND THE ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Interview with Ronnie Eldridge

Columbus Avenue Business Improvement District

2019 Eldridge – Session 1 of 2 2

PREFACE

The following is a transcript of the first of two sessions of an oral history interview with Ronnie Eldridge conducted by Leyla Vural on February 14, 2019. This interview is part of the Columbus Avenue and the Upper West Side Oral History Project, sponsored by the Columbus Avenue Business Improvement District.

Ronnie Eldridge (born in 1931) is a lifelong Upper West Sider and was the City Council member for the area from 1989 to 2001.

In this interview, Eldridge talks about growing up on the Upper West Side – where she attended P.S. 166, Joan of Arc Junior High School, the High School of Music & Art, and . In her descriptions of the Upper West Side, Eldridge recalls how the main cross streets and created distinct Jewish and Irish Catholic neighborhoods. Eldridge recounts how she got involved in politics, beginning with her shared birthday with FDR (January 30), the “Youth Builders” program that her middle-school civics teacher ran, and first joining a local Democratic Club at age twenty-one. She talks about the urban renewal projects of the 1950s and 1960s on the West Side and Father Henry Browne’s efforts to protect low-income West Siders from displacement. She describes how she and her first husband (Larry Eldridge), along with a small group of families, followed the Turtle Bay model and together bought and renovated seven brownstones on West Ninety-third and West Ninety-fourth Streets between Columbus Avenue and Amsterdam Avenue and created a community with shared outdoor space. She recalls rough years in the neighborhood and also a strong community that she never considered leaving.

Eldridge also talks about her first job (at CBS) and her work as a special assistant in the Lindsay administration, where she helped with arrangements for the Christopher Street Liberation March in 1970 and dealt with conditions in SROs (single room occupancy residences) and affordable housing for poor New Yorkers. Eldridge reflects on the Upper West Side and notes that many of the issues of concern remain the same.

The interviewee has reviewed, edited, and approved this transcript. Readers should bear in mind that this is a verbatim transcript of an interview and, therefore, does not read like a polished piece of written work. Time codes have been included to make it easier for readers to match the transcript with the audio recording of the interview. Time codes may, however, no longer be completely accurate because of edits to the transcript. Where there are differences between the transcript and the audio recording, the transcript is the final document of record.

The views expressed in this oral history interview are the interviewee’s alone and do not necessarily reflect those of the Columbus Avenue Business Improvement District.

Eldridge – Session 1 of 2 3

Interviewee: Ronnie Eldridge Interviewer: Leyla Vural Interview date: February 14, 2019 Session: 1 of 2 Location: , N.Y.

Vural: [00:00:01] Okay, it’s Thursday, February 14th, 2019. This is Leyla Vural interviewing

Ronnie Eldridge in her apartment for the Columbus Avenue and Upper West Side Oral History

Project. Thank you, Ronnie.

Eldridge: [00:00:14] You’re welcome [chuckles].

Vural: [00:00:15] What I’m really interested in is sort of your stories and memories of the Upper

West Side as you’ve experienced it personally and the work that you’ve done with and for the neighborhood.

Eldridge: [00:00:28] It’s a lot. You know, I’m old, so it’s a lot of years [chuckles]. I’ve lived on the West Side with the exception of a few years that I don’t admit, but when I was—I guess from second grade to sixth grade, we moved around a lot. I was born in 1931, at a hospital that was on

West End Avenue and around Sixty-second Street. It later became the Power Memorial Institute or something, high school or something, and now I think it’s a condominium. And I’ve lived basically as far north as Ninety-third Street and now as far south as Fifty-seventh Street.

[00:01:07] I was here during World War II—before actually. I was born in 1931. So, that was I guess the height of the Depression and stories about, you know, a shantytown in Riverside Park and all of that. I went—when we moved back here from Philadelphia, I lived in Elkins Park,

Pennsylvania. My father had changed jobs a lot, so we moved a lot in the first couple of—in those mid-years when I wasn’t here. I went to PS [Public School] 166 and then I went to Joan of

Arc Junior High School, which was on Ninety-third Street. Then I went to the High School of

Eldridge – Session 1 of 2 4

Music & Art, which was up near City College [The City College of New York], and then I landed up at Barnard College. So it’s always been on the West Side.

[00:01:49] I used to go to high school on a trolley car that ran up Broadway, close to the islands, and I remember—it seems impossible—but we stood next to a—you know, the trolley car would be there and then we were on the side near the sidewalk, but we’d stand in the middle of the street for the trolley car. There would be a post in a white concrete base and that’s where we picked the trolley car up. We had to transfer at 125th Street to get up to 137th Street. It’s hard for my kids to understand there was a trolley car. And of course also there were the double-decker buses.

[00:02:26] We always lived west of Broadway, and I got into a lot of trouble years later when I said that the—especially the Jewish children were—although I went to PS 166 and Joan of Arc that were between Amsterdam [Avenue] and Columbus [Avenue]—we never walked over to

Central Park on one of the smaller streets—we’d go to Eighty-sixth Street—because the Irish kids would beat us up.

[00:02:58] So, when I first went to work for John Lindsay in 1970, there was an interview with me in The New York Post, Judy Michaelson, and she—at some point I must have told the story that I was afraid we’d be beaten up. So, years later, when Jimmy Breslin and I married, a friend of his called—somebody I knew—I mean, an Irishman who worked at the City Council, in the police department—he called Jimmy and he said, “Are you marrying Ronnie Eldridge? Don’t you know she hates Catholics!” [Chuckles] So, it’s that kind of tradition.

[Phone rings]

[00:03:31] I thought I disconnected it, I’m so sorry.

Eldridge – Session 1 of 2 5

[INTERRUPTION]

[00:03:32] —streets, and wide streets were always the divisions between neighborhoods. So, my division would be between Eighty-sixth and Ninety-sixth. And I remember kids used to play marbles on these streets and you couldn’t really walk sometimes on the sidewalk between certain blocks. There’d be marbles.

[00:03:52] At Joan of Arc Junior High School, we used to have line up outside and we weren’t allowed to talk in the classrooms and it was a little oppressive, so that’s why I went to Music &

Art at the end of eighth grade. But at Joan of Arc, I had a civics teacher in seventh grade who was remarkable. He later became a principal at another school, Herbert Evan [?]. And he was really responsible for enriching, or picking up on, my interest in politics and just made me deeply immersed in politics. He would take—he had something called Youth Builders, which was an

Eleanor Roosevelt project, and we even met with Eleanor Roosevelt. He’d take us to the Town

Hall, which is a building down on the [West] Forties, to the Town Hall Meeting of the Air

[America’s Town Meeting of the Air]. They would have a forum every week, I think it was, and we would be able sometimes to ask questions.

[00:04:47] It was during the war effort, so it was really a whole emphasis on civics and your role as a citizen and your participation, which has really stayed with me through my whole—that’s what motivated me.

[00:05:03] We went to the [Charles M.] Schwab mansion, I remember. There’s an apartment building called Schwab House. It’s a whole square block. But in the early days, it had a mansion on it and the whole block was the surrounding one. And a friend of mine and I went and rang the

Eldridge – Session 1 of 2 6 front doorbell and the caretaker came, because nobody was living there, and we got a whole bunch of keys for the war effort [chuckles].

[00:05:27] And, you know, we had ration stamps. Headlights on the cars were all half painted black. The streetlamps were half painted black, sometimes weren’t on. There weren’t many cars because there was gas rationing. So, we used to play in the middle of the street on any of the streets.

[00:05:47] We had air-raid drills in school, but we never really feared that we were going to be attacked—or at least I didn’t. I didn’t feel that sense. But it was eerie. We’d have air-raid drills.

My father bought a light that it was guaranteed that you could keep on during the air raid, and the air-raid wardens, who were all volunteers, would blow their whistles and say, “Turn out that light in Apartment 3A!” and he would say, “They can’t see it.” You know, so it was that kind of stress. But that was about it.

[00:06:24] We’d stand on line to buy—there was a store—there used to be a subway at 91st and

Broadway and that got closed down. Now we go from Eighty-sixth to Ninety-third—part of the express—but on the corner was a poultry store. And I remember standing on line, long lines, so that we could buy a chicken with the rationing and stuff.

[00:06:49] You know, and in those days, we had places like The Tip Toe Inn at Eighty-sixth

Street, which was a wonderful restaurant, and they had early suppers, the early-bird specials, and a lot of older people would go there. And it was always a place where politicians would go after their clubs met or something at night. But the waiters were those old, wonderful, old-time waiters. And next to it was Tip Toe Delicatessen, which sold the best thin-sliced ryebread there ever was [chuckles] and great sandwiches.

Eldridge – Session 1 of 2 7

[00:07:30] It was very vibrant. We had a lot of refugees that came. You could walk down the street and mostly German accents. But it was a very friendly, active community.

[00:07:49] I never went really on Columbus Avenue until—I do remember going—there was a movie house at like Eighty-fourth or Eighy-fifth and Columbus, and I remember seeing a very scary movie with Humphrey Bogart. I looked it up recently, something about the trucks go at night [“They Drive By Night”]. And the elevated subway—elevated railroad was still up. So, that had to be in the early forties, I think, right?

Vural: [00:08:21] I think it was taken down in 1940, actually.

Eldridge: [00:08:25] I just looked it up. I think it was ‘42 but I’m not sure.

Vural: [00:08:28] Was it? Okay.

Eldridge: [00:08:29] And I can’t remember how I was there. I think if it was ’42—maybe it was being dismantled, because I don’t remember the trains, I just remember the structure. But I remember the structure. That’s the only time I can remember that I remember the structure.

Vural: [00:08:43] And how do you remember yourself as a kid? What were you like?

Eldridge: [00:08:52] When we did all this moving, we were in Westchester at the beginning and

I went to Tuckahoe High School for first grade and I was Jill when the whole school had a thing called The Wedding of Jack and Jill, with a crepe-paper dress. I remember that.

[00:09:18] And then I changed schools and I went to one in New Rochelle, where a teacher, who

I remember was a visiting teacher from Pasadena, California, taught us how to make wire-framed dolls out of pipe-cleaners and then wrap it with rags and then dress them. And my mother, who was an interior decorator, always kept all these things. She had boxes of lace and velvet and little

Eldridge – Session 1 of 2 8 things. Anyway, I made a beautiful Queen Elizabeth with a green velvet and brocade dress and a lace collar and red-wool hair—and I loved it.

[00:09:58] When I changed schools, that became my entrance into making friends. So, I was already a little political in my thinking and if I was in a new school I’d say, “Do you know how to make these wire dolls?” Then of course I would show them and then I had a lot of friends.

[00:10:17] I must have had some kind of involvement. And at Music & Art of course I was very outspoken. Also, in junior high school, we had what we thought was a woman’s sorority. We had a Greek letter—it’s all mixed up. But we were playing softball on Riverside Park at Ninety-third

Street and we were on the grass, and the policeman came and said, “Get off the grass.” And I remember saying, “You don’t want us on the street. Now why can’t we be on the grass?” And he said something like, “If I was your father, I would take you over my knee and spank you.” So, I was already there.

[00:10:55] But Music & Art was a whole different experience. It was a wonderful school. I’ve never met anybody who didn’t say it was one of the most important things in their life.

[00:11:03] The faculty was mostly socialists fighting with communists or vice versa [chuckles] and we were all very liberal. It was the beginning, in the forties, the beginning of the United

Nations. So, we were always saying that any of the disputes there were always the American’s fault, not the Soviets. It was a whole— But it was great, and we were very articulate and stuff.

[00:11:25] We had a student co-op and I became president of that. Max Frankel, who had just recently come from Germany—he landed up being the editor of The New York Times—but he had just recently emigrated from Germany. He had no accent at all. It was amazing. Anyway, he

Eldridge – Session 1 of 2 9 was my predecessor, then I ran his campaign, but we lost when he ran for president of the G.O., the General Organization, or whatever it was called.

[00:11:56] We’d go to wonderful concerts at night at Lewisohn Stadium, which was this open arena up at City College, and the Philharmonic [New York Philharmonic] would play there. And a woman named Minnie Guggenheimer—she had this very high voice and she was the benefactor, she sponsored these, she would always apologize for the airplane noises [chuckles] flying over the arena.

[00:12:25] So, I had a very comfortable life.

[00:12:27] My brother came down with polio when we were living, I guess—it must have been my first year of junior high school. I’m not sure. And we were supposed to move back to

Westchester. My mother wanted to move back. But we landed up moving to an empty apartment next door. So, I grew up on Eighty-ninth Street, essentially.

[00:12:51] And that was an interesting thing. He was only four years old and he had a stiff neck and—but we were all scared to death of polio in those days, infantile paralysis. In the summer you didn’t go to swim in pools and you were very careful. And he was in a playgroup and one day he just said his neck bothered him. And my mother, who never paid attention, for some reason called the doctor. Anyway, they took a spinal tap and then they came to put him in the hospital. And the choice was going to Mount Sinai, where they did their traditional treatment of polio, or going to Willard Parker [Willard Parker Hospital], which was a city hospital on the East

River down around Fourteenth Street, where Sister [Elizabeth] Kenny was working.

[00:13:33] And so they took—they wrapped him in a sheet and he went in an ambulance. My parents were never allowed to touch him, until he came home three months later, but they could

Eldridge – Session 1 of 2 10 visit once a week behind the glass partition. So, it was those early days of—and it wasn’t shocking because people were being stricken with polio a lot, you know.

Vural: [00:13:55] What year was that?

Eldridge: [00:13:57] It has to be in the early forties, about ’43, I think, or so, yes.

Vural: [00:14:04] And was he okay ultimately?

Eldridge: [00:14:05] He was ultimately okay. He was never paralyzed, but as he grew older his leg was thinner, but that was—it wasn’t noticeable. But then later, fifty years later, he developed that syndrome and eventually he had kidney failure and then he died. But he reached about sixty- five or something. But I had friends that were totally—Harvey—I remember Harvey. I mean, he wore two leg braces and crutches, but he ran and he carried his briefcase and, you know, it wasn’t that unusual. Nor were there many accommodations for people with disabilities. So, it’s an enormous change.

Vural: [00:14:46] When you look back, do you realize that it was the Depression? Like do you remember it being—times feeling economically hard or the neighborhood feeling like it was struggling?

Eldridge: [00:15:00] I don’t remember the neighborhood struggling, but I remember my mother always, you know, always worried about money. But she always worried about money. But we always had—she always had some kind of household help [chuckles], so I could never quite, you know, put it all together. But they didn’t have any—they really didn’t have much money. And when they had moved—the few years they lived in Westchester, there was a house we lived in, which I loved. It was on the top of a little hill where everybody’d sleighride from the front. And

Eldridge – Session 1 of 2 11 they could have bought it for something like $700, but they did have it so we had to move. And one of the reasons they moved was you got the extra month’s rent and things.

[00:15:45] That part of it—but I was really shielded. I never felt deprived, although I still clean my plate, unfortunately [chuckles]. I have to eat everybody’s food left over. We always grew up with, you know, “the starving children in Europe,” or here, or something. [Coughs] Excuse me.

[00:16:04] No, I didn’t for some reason, and I don’t know why. And I’ve inherited some of those traits, but otherwise I’m totally the opposite. It’s interesting. But there was definitely a generational thing. And I think of my parents now when I look at prices. You know, it’s just incredible to see what a loaf of bread costs [chuckles]. It’s shocking to me. And I see my kids, who—you just—you begin to understand the historic changes more than you do when you’re living through them. It’s all very kind of interesting.

[00:16:40] I didn’t notice the poverty. I think the poverty was overcome. By that time in the forties, I guess we were recovering, so it was a different story.

Vural: [00:16:50] You mentioned that the Irish Catholics lived east of Broadway and Jewish families lived west of Broadway. Can—

Eldridge: [00:16:58] And then Central Park. They’d live on Central Park. Jewish families.

Vural: [00:17:02] Jewish families. So, can you describe a little bit more what the ethnic and racial and sort of economic mix was of the Upper West Side, as you remember it in the thirties and forties?

Eldridge: [00:17:12] Herman Wouk explained it in what was it, Marjorie Morningstar?—in a book. I remember he was the speaker at my graduation from Barnard [chuckles]. And he had

Eldridge – Session 1 of 2 12 labeled it. Central Park West was the most—the elitist. Then came Riverside and West End, you know, up to Broadway.

[00:17:34] The composition west of Broadway was more apartment houses and I think more comfortable people. East of it, between where the walkups and the tenements, later the public housing—I don’t remember when the first public housing came in—but they were the rooming houses. And then we lived through the West Side Urban Renewal Area. That came a little later after college. It really came—somewhere around late fifties, I think. And that displaced a lot of people. So, I sort of followed these displaced people a lot in my own career kind of thing.

[00:18:18] I got married in 1955. I graduated from Barnard in 1952. Now, those were totally different times. Music & Art was this heady, full-spirited, articulate, outspoken group. By the time I got to Barnard, we were at the height of the McCarthy era, or the beginning. Professors were being questioned. They were losing stuff. And Barnard had a woman who was on trial,

Judith Copland, for treason. She was eventually—she was acquitted, but Barnard was terrified. I mean, they didn’t want any problems at all. So, it was so quiet.

[00:18:57] And Eisenhower became the president the same year that I started college and he came straight from the Army, the general, the hero of war. But it was known, I think, that the

Republicans were grooming him to run for president, which he did eventually.

[00:19:17] The big issues on campus were no fraternities, no posture pictures—because they used to take—we’d all have to line up and have our postures taken nude—our pictures. It became a big scandal [laughs]. They did it a couple—Yale, other places. It a crazy situation, but—

Vural: [00:19:37] What was the thinking? What was the point of that?

Eldridge – Session 1 of 2 13

Eldridge: [00:19:38] I don’t remember the thinking. It was just to see what—I don’t know.

[00:19:45] One of the most shocking things when I was at Barnard was the annual—one of the freshman, a freshman or sophomore, I think, classes in American government, we had a trip to

Washington. And one of the women in our class was a woman named Winifred Weeks and she was African-American, a beautiful African-American.

[00:20:09] So, it came out—she was coming with us—that we couldn’t all stay at the same hotel.

Because this was in 1949. It was segregated. The capital of the country was segregated. It was shocking to us. So, we said we’d say at the Y [YWCA]. But we couldn’t stay at the Y because that was also segregated. And eventually, unfortunately, Winifred—Winnie—dropped out, didn’t come with us.

[00:20:37] My father—my parents were very active, also. I shouldn’t give all my credit to Mr.

Evan. So, my father was the president of the parents’ association at Joan of Arc and all that kind of stuff and he was very vocal in his opposition to Barnard thinking to go ahead with this trip if we couldn’t take everybody with us. But the trip landed up going because Winnie didn’t come.

But that was kind of surprising.

[00:21:02] And going to Barnard on the West Side—then I don’t think the trolley was still running—take the subway or the bus—but I was a day student, so I went home every night. But it was as if you were in a different city, because you led this direct route up there and then your whole life—I was very involved in Columbia [University] Players and things like—I made costumes [chuckles].

Vural: [00:21:26] And first I want to ask you about Music & Art. What was it that was your area of art?

Eldridge – Session 1 of 2 14

Eldridge: [00:21:33] I was an art student. You had to take a test, either art or music, but you also had to have a high academic record. So, I was an art student. I have stopped painting or drawing, but my kids are always buying me paints or pens and pads to do something. I get scared. So, I’m reading all these things about don’t be scared, just do it [chuckles]. We’ll see.

Vural: [00:21:59] What did you study when you were at Barnard?

Eldridge: [00:22:02] Government. Politics and government. And I switched one year—one semester—to all fine arts. You had to pass a proficiency test in one language and by some grace of God I passed the French proficiency. I was a terrible language student. But then I had to take a second language and I was taking Italian—or Spanish, I guess. And I didn’t like the Spanish and

I didn’t want to keep up with the class. It was like four times a week and I hated the whole thing.

So, the daughter of my professor was a friend of mine and she said she’d write a letter that I was not a good student, I should drop the class.

[00:22:45] But then Barnard taught—paid for my class at general studies, which in those times, it was during the Korean War and so we had a lot of veterans coming to college, and I remember in the Italian class—Barnard is an all-women’s school, but occasionally some Columbia

[University] men might take the classes or we could go to Columbia.

[00:23:06] So, I was in general studies. And the professor, Begun Jari [? - phonetic], was a renowned Dante scholar. He had a cigarette holder. He was very elegant. And the class was very large. And the first class, he said, “How many of you speak Italian?” And most of the—a lot of the men raised their hands. He said, “You do not speak Italian, you speak Sicilian.” [Chuckles]

But he thought I was an Italian, I think, and he was always so nice to me and I managed to get a

B. And then I took Italian at one of these intensive courses and of course I can’t remember

Eldridge – Session 1 of 2 15 anything. So, those are the kind of things that make you question some of the liberal arts education, but anyway [chuckles].

Vural: [00:23:46] And what did you think you would do after college? What was your expectation for yourself?

Eldridge: [00:23:53] The normal expectations of somebody my age was to get a job for a while, to get married, and have children. That was it. Nobody thought about when children grew up or anything like that. I think, a little bit, I thought wouldn’t it be nice to go to law school? But I’m not a great student. I mean, I was a B+ I guess student. And we had no money. My family had really not enough money for that. So, I didn’t apply.

[00:24:25] During my college years, though, when I was doing the government—I interned with the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, and met Gus Tyler, who I then would see periodically through his life, and that was always interesting. But I wanted an interesting job. But my jobs, essentially, I think your decision was on the profession of the man you were going to marry [chuckles].

[00:24:52] So, it was all very interesting. I had a lot of dates, although I never thought I was that social. I mean in high school we always went out in groups and I remember when I’d go out with somebody, I didn’t want them to hold my hand. I’d sit on my hands in a movie [chuckles], maybe a little backward socially.

[00:25:18] Anyway, so you asked me—so, I graduated from Barnard and I went to speedwriting school, because I needed to learn how to type and take shorthand. And I picked up the shorthand right away. That was a kind of—a different—a bastard version of shorthand, which was easier. A six-week course, and I did the shorthand very well. I never could learn to type. I never could get

Eldridge – Session 1 of 2 16 the even things with all my fingers and I hated typing. And the Barnard Placement, basically— oh, I know what happened, originally, I went to work in the Stevenson [Adlai Stevenson] campaign, but they didn’t pay and I couldn’t really get a job. And when I think about it now, in those days, I was a young college student.

[00:25:59] But when I turned twenty-one, my father walked me up to the local Democratic Club and we knew the district leader, the male district leader, Herbert De Varco. And I had gone to school with his son, Donald, so I was welcomed into the club, but it turned out it was the first

Reform Club, basically.

[00:26:18] In those days, Carmine DeSapio was the head of Tammany Hall. And a lot of the veterans coming back from the war were young lawyers, very ambitious and interested in politics, and the veterans’ committees—the more liberal, I think, was the American AV, something like that, a more liberal,not the Veterans of Foreign Wars or the American Legion, but a more liberal, contemporary group—and they all were getting involved in politics. And so I was in that group.

[00:26:50] And that was when I graduated from college, I think, all around the same time that I joined the club. But I met a few people and I wanted to work on the Stevenson campaign, but I couldn’t get a job. So, that was that.

[00:27:05] I did, however, meet my first husband in Stevenson headquarters on the West Side

[chuckles], which were in the Towers. It’s now—it’s around 76th on Broadway. It has a theater in the lower part. It’s now I think a condominium. And he was returning some raffle books or contribution books from his ex-fiancé and I was painting a [inaudible] sign.

Eldridge – Session 1 of 2 17

[00:27:35] So, we went and had coffee and he walked me home and he didn’t leave me alone till we got married in ’55 [chuckles]. Anyway, that’s a whole other story.

[00:27:46] So Barnard told me about a job at CBS as a secretary to the economic advisor, who was a former professor from MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology], who had been the staff director of the President’s Materials Policy Commission in Washington, DC, and had met

Bill [William S.] Paley, who was the chair of the board of CBS and they had brought him up to advise on policy decisions.

[00:28:09] So, I went to the employment office. They handed me some—a card with typing and—no, first they dictated a letter and I typed the letter. And that was easy because the dictation was very easy and the letter was very short. Then they came and handed me a typing card and I thought, this is it. But anyway, I decided maybe if I tried to remember what was on it, I’d be able to type it when the test started, but of course they changed the card and I couldn’t type anything

[chuckles].

[00:28:39] So, the head of the employment office said to me, “Between you and I, Miss

Myers,”—and my eighth grade English teacher at Joan of Arc Junior High School had made us memorize the prepositions in the English language in alphabetical order. So, they started: aboard, about, above, across, after, against, along, among, around, at—I’ve never forgotten them. I mean, she used to use the baton and conduct it. So, when he said, “Between you I,” I knew that he didn’t really know what he was talking about because it should have been “between you and me.” And he called the professor and said I had not passed the typing test, but the professor said he’d like to meet me. And so I went upstairs and met him. And he said, “Are you physically

Eldridge – Session 1 of 2 18 handicapped? Are you poorly coordinated?” I said, “No, as a matter of fact, I’m an artist.”

Anyway, he hired me [chuckles].

[00:29:26] And we had to type long reports for the president and chairman of the board. And the president, Frank Stanton, was known for being meticulous about design and things, so he would hold up a paper to see if there had been an erasure, whatever. And I was typing six carbons and an original and you can’t make a mistake. But I didn’t—you know, I didn’t really know all the techniques of typing, so everything was marked with a pencil and measured with a ruler. It was a nightmare. I’d be there till midnight sometimes and I’d get near the bottom of the page and my hands were shaking so that you couldn’t finish. Because I could only type with two fingers—my index finger—we were typewriters where the pressure would show.

[00:30:17] Later, they told me that my papers were the most beautiful papers of anybody

[chuckles], my memos and stuff. They were ten pages long. And in the ’52 elections, which started just before, was the first year they used a computer to predict the election. And it was a

UNIVAC computer. It took up two rooms in Philadelphia. And that was connected to New York with teletype or something and then—

[00:30:46] So, they had fed basic information, which my boss had worked on, and it showed initially a four-to-one win for Eisenhower. But most of the people were Stevenson supporters, so they kept changing—and of course the machine was right and they were wrong from the beginning.

[00:31:06] So, that was one of the first things. Then we did long studies on subscription television, which we now have all over: VHF, UHF. Eventually, I got one of the first typewriters,

Eldridge – Session 1 of 2 19 electric typewriters, at CBS, so the pressure was smoother. And then eventually we got a secretary and I became the assistant or something.

[00:31:26] But I wanted to be in the news department. And my friend Max Frankel from college was a stringer for The [New York] Times. He was in the Army. And I remember, you know, one of the luxuries of working at places like CBS, you didn’t have to worry about staff, so you just put something in the outbox and it went. And I used to send him stuff special delivery. He got so angry at me because it would bring notice to where he was.

[00:31:49] Anyway, I wanted to be in the news department, but they didn’t hire any women for it. The closest you could come would be one job, a Sunday morning religious program, which had one woman on it, and that was it. It was also during the height of the McCarthy era and there was an office devoted to simply clearing any of the talent, or people working on shows, if it was red channels or any of those things, and they didn’t get jobs. We all had to sign a loyalty oath as we filed out our employment sheets, and I just signed it, although some of the organizations where I had been a member of—because, you know, Music & Art, it was all American Youth for

Democracy and silly things like that. So, that was pretty exciting.

[00:32:39] I did quit at one point to got to Community Chests and Councils, which is the forerunner of United Way. And I got there—it was near the U.N. [United Nations], which was thrilling in those days, because the U.N. was new and the flags. The Carnegie endowment building was where I was working. But everybody there was typing résumés to get another job someplace else [chuckles], so it wasn’t the—

Eldridge – Session 1 of 2 20

[00:33:04] And Sidney, when I left, he said—this is back to the Catholicism, which wasn’t my comment, this was his—he said, “The next person I get is going to be a graduate of a Catholic college, because they don’t ask questions.” Meaning I asked too many questions.

[00:33:19] Anyway, I went back and that’s when I had an assistant. And I got married to a psychologist and worked and then had my first child. And I went on a leave. I thought I’d be the oldest person in the playground, but it turned out I wasn’t. It was a wonderful group of women.

We still see each other—and we lived at 83rd and Riverside—West End Avenue and we’d go to the Eighty-third Street playground. And we would just—it was wonderful. We’d walk up, you know, push the carriages on Broadway, put political signs on the carriages. It was during the

Cuban—the beginning of Castro, and we had a lot of Cuban refugees. I remember meeting some of them. And we had Russians, because there was a residence in the neighborhood where the

Russian employees lived. So, we sat in the playground with Russian mothers. Meanwhile,

Rockefeller is building air-raid shelters all over the place. And the juxtaposition of it was fascinating. The Russian mothers wrapped their kids up very tightly in the blankets and we didn’t do that. It was a whole long thing.

[00:34:39] And we were very active in the playground and as a young mother on the streets. I loved it. It was one of the best times of my life. I just loved it [chuckles].

Vural: [00:34:45] So, what year was your first child born?

Eldridge: [00:34:48] ’59. And it was great. But I went on a leave of absence and I went back to

CBS, and fortunately, I guess, Larry was making enough money. It was never a lot of money but it was enough that I didn’t have to work. And I really missed not being home with the babies, so

I quit and I stayed home. And then I got more active in politics.

Eldridge – Session 1 of 2 21

Vural: [00:35:11] So, tell me, during that time, what was the neighborhood like? What were the issues that you were concerned about and what were you enjoying about the neighborhood?

Eldridge: [00:35:19] I lived through some crises in the city not paying any attention to them. I just don’t understand the whole thing. I must have led a very—I don’t know.

[00:35:39] So, I was active in politics. Eleanor Roosevelt, Herbert Lehman. It was all the reform stuff. We had large rallies. John Kennedy and, you know, a lot of that kind of stuff. Being on

Broadway, I’m trying to think of what we went to on Amsterdam and Columbus. Amsterdam had a local trade—a lot of stores—lamp store, glass, mirrors and glasses, and some upholstery things, and I think a dressmaker had a store there. Columbus Avenue began to have new stores on it. But that all came with an urban renewal area, which there were a couple of them. One was the Planetarium Council. It was a different kind of plan. I never quite knew what that was all about. But a lot of it was young families coming in and buying brownstones.

[00:36:38] From Eighty-seventh to Ninety-seventh Street became the West Side Urban Renewal

Area, between Amsterdam and Central Park West. And we would go—we rented a house in

Connecticut for the summer, and I was always wanted to be a suburban housewife, but Larry was working at nights and everything. Anyway, we watched one night on television a program about

Turtle Bay, which is 49th to 50th, I think, on the East Side, where a woman had bought these houses and renovated them and then sold them to friends and they had a common garden. And we thought wouldn’t that be interesting?

[00:37:24] And then Larry went to a housing show—well, I guess I’m out of sync. We made some inquiries, and I knew some people through politics and we learned more about the urban renewal area, and we spoke to other couples in the playground and we got a man named Sam

Eldridge – Session 1 of 2 22

Ratensky, who was head of the housing—I forget the name of the department in those days— who came up to talk to these couples about the urban renewal area and opportunities for development. But they weren’t interested working with us and so they sort of disappeared and they were not encouraging.

[00:37:56] But we had a group of five friends who wanted to get together and look for a place.

So, we had a friend who was—politics—who was a real estate agent and he showed us places.

Because it was that concept of Turtle Bay, of sharing space around the brownstones. And we looked at different places. There was a school called the Birch Wathen School, which was on

Ninety-third Street between Amsterdam and Columbus on the north side and on the south side of

Ninety-fourth between Amsterdam and Columbus, and they had common yards. Miss Birch owned Ninety-third and Miss Wathen owned Ninety-fourth Street and they got together and ran this private school, which was moving to the East Side, because the West Side was known for tenements and mess [chuckles], I think. I don’t remember—I guess crime—it wasn’t yet the crack epidemic. That came a little later.

[00:38:54] We looked at it and it was too massive a job for us. We couldn’t buy seven brownstones. Then we then found two others and then all of a sudden—and then it went off the market, somebody went to contract with it. And then all of a sudden Paul called and said they didn’t go through with the sale, and we went back and we looked at it and we were able to go to contract for these seven brownstones for—we each put in $3,000. So, for $15,000 we went to contract.

Eldridge – Session 1 of 2 23

[00:39:22] By this time Birch Wathen opened the new school and they wanted to get rid of it because people were raiding these brownstone buildings. They were going for the lead piping and stuff like that—and so we took the title for $15,000.

Vural: [00:39:37] What year was that?

Eldridge: [00:39:39] 1961. Larry Eldridge went to a housing show at the Coliseum [New York

Coliseum], which was then at , and the City booth was closed—we were very down on the City—but the FHA [Federal Housing Administration] was open. And he found a way to finance it with a ninety-seven percent guaranteed mortgage. So, he then also, much to the annoyance of the real estate broker, because he had wanted to get the mortgage and get paid for it, he went to a bank on Broadway and we got the financing. So, we then were able to renovate seven brownstones into I’m not sure how many apartments—twenty-some-odd—and we sold them for $3,000 a floor-through.

[00:40:36] We hired our own lawyer, an architect. We did the plans. We had some—we had five duplexes, which each one of us had. Then we sold the floor-throughs for $3,000. We had a couple of half-floor studios. We had a couple with Xs, you know, so it would be a duplex, but it would be a living room and kitchen and stuff on the first, then you’d go up to the bedrooms. And we sold them all on plans that we had on our dining room table.

[00:40:57] I’m missing something, because when we first got married, we had an apartment on

85th and Amsterdam and it was a hard block and people—a lot of prostitutes. And the Puerto

Rican influx had come at this point and I think that’s what the—I always remember somebody complaining that the Puerto Ricans “don’t know what refrigerators are like, they put their milk in the water tank of a toilet.”

Eldridge – Session 1 of 2 24

[00:41:24] There were all kinds of stories about it, but it was an influx of population. And that was in the late fifties—in the fifties—early fifties. And that made some of these neighborhoods not so good. I think that’s what part of it was—they could get tenement apartments or rooming houses.

[00:41:42] Eighty-fifth Street was notorious for all the—but it didn’t bother us. We had a nice apartment on the sixteenth floor. But then after that we moved to 83rd and West End Avenue.

We had a two-bedroom apartment with a maid’s room, a dining room, and a kitchen for $200 a month [chuckles] at 473 West End, at 83rd. And then later on, when we had the third child, we moved into a bigger apartment for $220 a month rent. That’s the rents in those days.

[00:42:16] Meanwhile we had these brownstones and we sold them all out on the paper. We advertised in The Saturday Review of Literature, which is now defunct. People would come and they’d look at it and buy it.

[00:42:26] In 1965, we moved in and it was—they’re beautiful. They just celebrated the fiftieth anniversary last year and they had a big potluck supper and we all went. It’s a co-op. It was able, not to get the tax abatement that you could get for renovating rooming houses, but they became a redevelopment company, which was another tax advantage thing, which had an income limitation, but we all managed to fit into it. But they’ve subsequently bought out of that, so now they own. They don’t have, I don’t think, a mortgage on it.

[00:43:05] And it’s beautiful, you know. And now, the apartments there you weren’t allowed to make a profit when it was a redevelopment company, but now it’s market value, so now they’re selling for more than a million dollars.

Eldridge – Session 1 of 2 25

Vural: [00:43:15] So, when you moved in in 1965 tell me, what was the neighborhood like?

How did you navigate? Because one of the things I think is really interesting is, you know, neighborhoods are always changing and they’re always a little bit contested and there’s a mix of people and maybe there’s, you know, troubles—

Eldridge: [00:43:35] Right.

Vural: [00:43:36] —but there’s also families going to work and raising their kids and—how do you remember navigating the landscape?

Eldridge: [00:43:44] Well, the urban renewal area—so, they evicted a lot of people from the side streets, or from the avenues, and they built large apartment houses on the avenues. They’re mostly middle-income co-ops. They had different sponsors for them: Goddard Riverside

Neighborhood Council, Strycker’s Bay, all that kind of thing. Then individual people who bought brownstones were anxious to attract middle-class families and so they had open houses and you had people that some people looked upon as being wealthy and intruding, really.

[00:44:18] There was a very strong neighborhood organization called Strycker’s Bay

Neighborhood Assembly. The head of it was Father Browne, Harry Browne, Henry Browne, who was at St. Gregory’s Church on [West] Ninetieth Street between Amsterdam and Columbus.

And at the beginning, he was very suspicious of our project, but he and Larry Eldridge became great friends and Larry became a vice president of Strycker’s Bay.

[00:44:45] And our brownstones were integrated. We did have African-American people. We had different kinds of—we had lawyers and a writer and a correction officer. I mean it was a very mixed group, so it was very interesting that way. But we were—well, Larry died in ’70. We moved in ’65. And he was—he had started it. He didn’t know what a mortgage was. Neither of

Eldridge – Session 1 of 2 26 us did. We had never lived outside of the city. And he was the person who got all the construction complaints and God knows what, but he managed. He was a psychologist, so he saw patients and went through different stages in his career.

[00:45:33] The neighborhood was rough, there’s no doubt about that. I don’t think we were burglarized while he was alive, but when he died in 1970—and I didn’t move for I guess ten years—we were burglarized kind of on a regular basis and it was during the crack epidemic. And we wouldn’t know we were being burglarized. So, you’d get up in the morning, you’d go downstairs—we had the parlor floor and the floor above. The downstairs floor was an apartment on part of it and the front was supposed to be an office for Larry, which he never really used, but we owned it and that was it.

[00:46:14] But we had a big tower outside the kitchen. It was a fire escape, but it was like a terrace outside, and a kitchen door that had slats on it because we wanted the ventilation. And we’d find a slat or two missing and then we’d find empty cartons of orange juice, cigarette butts on the floor. And my kids, my son especially, “You have to call the police.” And I’d say, “They didn’t wake us up, did they?” Because the police weren’t going to do anything anyway, you know, wasn’t responsive. My daughter Emily kept a knife under her bed.

[00:46:53] I was too casual, I think, as far as the kids go. We did finally call the police, I remember, with one time and they came and they wanted to know what was valuable. I think something was stolen. It wasn’t always stolen, sometimes they were just there. But they took a television set and a coat, I think. And the police wanted to know—Danny was ten-years-old or eleven-years-old. He said, “What was missing?” And Danny said the television set. And he said,

Eldridge – Session 1 of 2 27

“Well, what was that worth?” And so my son says, “Well, it cost about $300. I guess now you could say it’s worth about $450.” He was increasing [chuckles].

[00:47:28] But the cops, they didn’t do anything. There was nothing they could do. But somebody one night—it was the year that [Jimmy] Carter was running for president, because I was supposed to go to New Jersey, to a rally or something. I don’t know why. I think I was working for the Port Authority by that time. Somebody woke me up climbing in my window and that became a little more serious.

[00:47:55] But we came home and they would have cut—to really afford to do the renovations, we needed to do plasterboard construction and not the whole plaster walls. It cost more money. I was a Democratic district leader and one of the other Democratic district leaders, Frank Rossetti, he was an assemblyman, but he was also a vice president of the plasterers’ union—and my assemblyman, Al [Albert H.] Blumenthal, who was a good friend of mine, needed a favor from

Rossetti and at the same time he told him about my predicament, and all a sudden the building department, which they never did, approved the plasterboard construction.

[00:48:38] But that meant it was less secure because they’d have a saw or something and they were able to cut out a square near the front door and open it from inside. So that was another time we were burglarized.

[00:48:49] It was kind of wild. I remember Lucy—we had a dog, and Lucy—we had two dogs, eventually—Lucy, my youngest child, went out to walk the dog and she came back and said

[chuckles] a kid on the street said, “No white lady’s dog is going to kiss my ass.” She was a little worried about it. And we found somebody locked under the—we had a brick wall, low brick wall, in front of the brownstones that the garbage cans were in, and I don’t remember this but the

Eldridge – Session 1 of 2 28 kids—there was a young lady sitting under there who had been attacked and put—I don’t know—put down. I don’t know. It was all very—

[00:49:29] And by this time Joan of Arc [Joan of Arc Junior High School at 154 West Ninety- third Street] was unruly. Somebody tossed a file cabinet out the window. So, it was not a safe neighborhood at all. I mean we even had a shooting, I think, on the block. Somehow, we managed to survive it and live through it. I just—I don’t know. I mean, it just—in a way it was like an evolution and it wasn’t that striking if you lived through it, I guess. I’m not sure.

Vural: [00:49:58] So that’s interesting, do you remember if you ever thought about leaving?

Eldridge: [00:50:02] I never thought about leaving. Well, by this time I was a widow with three kids, you know. And at first, I was working for John Lindsay and then I went to Ms. Magazine, and that was very supportive being a widow, so that was really good. And we had great parties in the backyard and stuff like that. And I had a very supportive community of these people living in this group, and lots of friends who were always very supportive. It made me understand how lucky I was—because I was thirty-nine years old—compared to some of the people that I would see on welfare. I mean, I don’t know how people live with the depression and the anxiety. It’s just very difficult. And I was just so privileged because I had this support system.

[00:50:58] I forget what the question was.

Vural: [00:51:00] If you ever thought about leaving.

Eldridge: [00:51:01] Oh. No. Well, before Larry—and I guess before we did the brownstones, after the riots, I drove out to New Jersey—because I said I always wanted to be a suburban housewife, I really did—and I saw all these houses, especially in Montclair. Because of the

Eldridge – Session 1 of 2 29

Newark riots, people were moving out, so there were beautiful houses for sale for practically nothing. But we never moved, and now my daughter lives in Montclair and every time I go, I’m sorry that I wasn’t a housewife in Montclair [chuckles].

[00:51:43] No, I never really thought of moving. But I did eventually think of moving because we were burglarized a lot, and my kids had a teacher who was very wealthy, came from a wealthy family, and we were very friendly, and he had an eight-room—seven, eight-room apartment on Central Park West at Sixty-seventh Street. And he had bought a brownstone on

Eighty-seventh, between Central Park and Columbus, and he couldn’t sell his apartment so he offered it to me for $220,000 or something. And there was somebody in our building, in the brownstones, who wanted my apartment. And eventually that’s what happened, we moved to

Sixty-seventh and Central Park West. It’s a whole other long saga, but anyway [chuckles]. Yes, it was quite something, and it was right before I think John Lennon was shot. It was the same week that we moved, something like that.

Vural: [00:52:50] So, 1980? ’79, ’80?

Eldridge: [00:52:52] Yes, ’80. But back to the neighborhood, there was something I wanted to tell you and I forgot. Columbus Avenue was developing. I especially remember on Columbus

Avenue the shop, and I’m sure people are going to tell you a lot about Mythology. We always went to Mythology. It was the most incredible place. I mean they had wonderful gifts. And not only the gifts, but they’d wrap it in a paper bag, they’d stencil, a stencil on the paper bag, blue and white, and then tie it with a ribbon. They were—you know, they were neighborhood people.

They were lovely. And that was the beginning in a way of all these shops on Columbus Avenue.

It really just developed as far as I can remember.

Eldridge – Session 1 of 2 30

[00:53:46] You know, I used to go to the Museum of Natural History when I was a kid and it was scary [chuckles]. You know, the floors creaked and Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet and all these different movies we’d go to. And then I’d take my kids when they were younger and we’d go, and I don’t remember—it just flourished. I don’t remember it as being crowded as it is now. It’s a whole just, the neighborhood was really incredible.

Vural: [00:54:14] Where did you send your kids to school?

Eldridge: [00:54:18] Well, they went to private school, because they were in school in the sixties and the schools were pretty bad and it was very hard, you didn’t really want to do it. But we lived at 83rd and West End and we went to a lot of the schools, where they looked at the kids and they sort of tested them and they had the blocks and they did this and they did that, and I hated it the way they did it. But the Calhoun School was—the lower school—it was an upper school for girls in the [West] Nineties, but they bought these two or three brownstones on West

End and Eighty-first or Eighty-second Street and they were in the brownstones. It was such a sweet, warm school. It was two blocks away. That’s where they went. And it was lovely.

Vural: [00:55:00] Do you remember the blackout in 1977? Where were you when that happened?

Eldridge: [00:55:07] I remember the blackout in ’65.

Vural: [00:55:11] Oh, tell me about that.

Eldridge: [00:55:12] Excuse me! [Laughs] I was in Robert Kennedy’s office. It was a post office—in the post office at 45th and Lexington Avenue. And because it was a blackout and it was a post office, they had money, so it was a lockdown. I don’t think we had that term in those

Eldridge – Session 1 of 2 31 days, but it was a lockdown. You couldn’t leave. You couldn’t come in, you couldn’t leave. And so we were all—I was there with the staff. He had just left for South America that day.

[00:55:39] And I suggested that we burn string and look at the classified news—the phone book,

The Yellow Pages—and we called nursing homes and said, “Senator Robert Kennedy wants to know if you’re alright. Do you need anything.” It was a great way of doing it [chuckles]. And then eventually we could leave, and somebody walked me up to the crosstown—and there were no lights, no traffic lights, and there’s always a volunteer directing traffic, so it was great—but we got up to Forty-ninth Street to wait for the crosstown bus and Phil Ryan, who walked me up, went back to the office.

[00:56:19] And I met a guy named Al [Allard K.] Lowenstein—and this is a whole other—you don’t want this. I mean this is politics and stuff and it was funny and wonderful, but he was there. I had been avoiding him. And there was another young woman there who came over to us and said, “I’m sorry to interrupt you but I just have to tell you this. Can you guess where I’ve been for the last three hours?” We said no. She said, “I have been in my psychiatrist’s office and

I had three hours and I didn’t have to pay for it!” [Chuckles] So, we all walked uptown and home.

[00:56:52] The 1977—was it?—’87?

Vural: [00:56:55] ’77.

Eldridge: [00:56:56] ’77. I was running for borough president, which was a big mistake, I guess, but I was definitely the best candidate [chuckles]. But it turned out—Percy Sutton was—by this time I had worked for Ms. and I was at Channel 13 where we were producing a feminist series for public broadcasting, but—what did I start to?—oh, Percy Sutton, who was the borough

Eldridge – Session 1 of 2 32 president, had called me at Channel 13 and asked me if I would run his campaign for mayor. And

I thought to myself, if he wants me to run his campaign, why don’t I run for the office, right? So

I decided I was going to run for borough president, because I had been active as the district leader and all these things.

[00:57:43] But then Andy [Andrew] Stein and Bob [Robert F.] Wagner, Jr., who were both running for mayor at the time, dropped down to run for borough president, also. And David

Dinkins was the fourth person. And David and I were sort of like a partnership against these other two. But I think I—I don’t know if I came in last or David. I don’t know. But I was definitely the best candidate [chuckles].

[00:58:08] I was at a coffee klatsch on Eighty-ninth Street and Central Park West, my kids were at the brownstone, which always was a little worrisome because of stuff, but I had a wonderful babysitter, and I guess I walked home, and we were fine. And we were never in part of that raiding or anything. I mean I never had that kind of violence right near us, so we never saw that at all. But it happened, I guess, you know.

Vural: [00:58:39] So, when you were running for Manhattan borough president what were the issues that were concerning you about the Upper West Side, but about the city more generally, or

Manhattan?

Eldridge: [00:58:47] That’s a very good question. I can’t remember [chuckles]. I think they were all the same issues. When I worked at City Hall, and that was with Lindsay in 1970, my first major project was lead poisoning. The Young Lords on the East side were a new group of activists and Puerto Ricans. They were mostly college graduates, college students, radical. They

Eldridge – Session 1 of 2 33 were great. And they were lobbying for city services in their neighborhood, and one of their activities was to go door-to-door to test for lead.

[00:59:22] And I was able—because Jack Newfield was a good friend of mine, and Paul Dubrule was an organizer, and these four scientists, young scientists, all of whom are now very well- known, famous—they were all very advanced—but they were the scientific committee for something and they were young. And they had gone to a conference in St. Louis about lead poisoning and they knew that there were lead paints in tenements all over the city.

[00:59:52] And so I was able, inside, to move the mayor and the health department and with

Gordon Chase, who was then the administrator, we really began to change—we changed the way they tested kids for lead. Of course, it’s gone on for years and we still have the lead poisoning problem. So, you see the same problems.

[01:00:12] Another problem was, well, the gays, but that was a more successful project. But

SROs [single room occupancies], and that was interesting, because in the urban renewal area, when they condemned the buildings they then—there were a lot of rooming houses that were respectable and they were needed housing for people. And there are some people who just don’t want their own apartment, but they all got evicted and they moved to different places.

[01:00:41] And when I worked for Lindsay, I was the taskforce chairman in Greenwich Village and they had a lot of welfare hotels and SROs. And we had to work with them. And one of them was the Greenwich Hotel, which was at the corner of—I forget which, Bleecker and something—and it’s built around an atrium. And it’s very high up—I don’t know how many floors—but it’s cubicles. It was built for indigent men as a Mills Hotel in the seventies—I mean

Eldridge – Session 1 of 2 34 in 1870. And so the walls would go up and then there’d be heavy chicken wire for the circulation—so some of the rooms faced the atrium and some faced outside.

[01:01:30] But it was filled with people who’d been evicted, people out of prison, people mentally ill—and it was mayhem. It was really terrible. You couldn’t—we’d have to cover—put a garbage can on top of our head when you crossed the atrium, because everything got thrown down.

[01:01:50] We set up a St. Vincent’s social service unit. We organized a tenants’ committee. One of the people didn’t come for the meeting and the social worker worried. I called the guy at The

Tombs, which then was the city detention center, and sure enough, he was there. And we sent somebody over and said, “Mayor Lindsay came to get you,” because he had been arrested on a

Vera summons, which meant not going to jail, and he appeared for his hearing and the Legal Aid lawyer had an argument with the judge and left, and he was remanded. So we brought him home.

But, I mean, all these things that you can’t imagine handling them this way here.

[01:02:31] But all these hotels are now converted. And the Greenwich Hotel is now called The

Atrium. It’s a luxury condo, plus rental housing, so they’ve moved everybody someplace else.

The problem never gets solved.

[01:02:51] SROs were a very large issue, and from my office, we helped, in the Department of

Social Services, to set up a special SRO to deal with those things. Then it didn’t get—you know, eventually the funding left and it was the SRO Law Project at Goddard Riverside and on the East

Side, their funding was gone. So, they are always the problems: schools, education, not so much traffic, although at one point we had traffic in the Village when they weren’t going to do the— you know, what was that called? That was Jane—

Eldridge – Session 1 of 2 35

Vural: [01:03:32] Jane Jacobs.

Eldridge: [01:03:33] Yes.

Vural: [01:03:34] So, on the subject of Jane Jacobs, were you aware of her in the early sixties?

Eldridge: [01:03:39] I was aware of her only because we had our own battles with the urban renewal. But I didn’t really know her, no, but we knew about her.

Vural: [01:03:48] And you knew her work.

Eldridge: [01:03:50] Right.

Vural: [01:03:51] And do you remember if you thought of yourself as sharing her thinking about what made a city work and what didn’t?

Eldridge: [01:04:00] Well, you know, it’s all common sense, so I don’t think I—because I’ve never been academic, so I never thought of it in terms of doctrine. But it’s all common sense.

[01:04:12] In the brownstones, there’s a low-rise, pretty new public housing on Ninety-fourth

Street. It’s fine. I mean we never really—the only problem we had were kids playing basketball in the middle of the night and you could hear the basketball. But it was a nice sound. But one of my little kids—I mean, Lucy—I don’t know how old she was, she was sitting on the kitchen table, she said, “Why don’t those people have air conditioning?” I mean, you know, it’s just all these senses of you know what’s going to make it work, but—

[01:04:47] I’m trying to think of the plans: it was aging, older people, it was housing, always.

They were the same issues. It wasn’t really—and crime, I guess, but I don’t remember really talking much about crime.

Eldridge – Session 1 of 2 36

Vural: [01:05:06] Do you remember The Endicott?

Eldridge: [01:05:07] Oh, I do, of course.

Vural: [01:05:09] Can you tell me what you remember about The Endicott?

Eldridge: [01:05:11] Well, it was a mess. There was a rumor that there were dead bodies in the wall. I don’t know if you ever heard that. There was Dorothy Pitman Hughes and Bob [Robert]

Gangi opened a child-care center there. It was a typical SRO with disruption and a mess. Yes, I do remember, very well.

Vural: [01:05:34] Yes.

Eldridge: [01:05:35] And that’s one of the earliest ones I think that got converted.

Vural: [01:05:38] Yes, so it got converted in the late seventies, turned into apartments. People were buying them in the early eighties. So, do you remember it being a difficult place in the sixties? Do you remember when it first kind of came into your consciousness as being a place to be concerned about?

Eldridge: [01:06:01] I was a [Democratic] district leader then and I remember going to a lot of blocks where the owners who bought—these young couples who bought—the brownstones were always concerned about what was going on next door. And I don’t really remember Eighty-first

Street as standing out, but I do remember The Endicott, yes.

Vural: [01:06:25] What was the area that your district covered?

Eldridge: [01:06:30] As a district leader?

Vural: [01:06:31] Yes.

Eldridge – Session 1 of 2 37

Eldridge: [01:06:32] I’m not quite sure. I think it went from Seventy-second to Ninety-sixth, maybe. And then my council district later on went originally from Fifty-something Street up to

Ninety-seventh, and then it kept changing. But there was an Ansonia Democratic Club that was on Seventy-second Street, so they were down.

[01:06:59] But I remember when we had just bought the brownstones and people had come to take the shutters out. We couldn’t afford to start renovating. So, first there was a New York State

Social Service program that we donated to the State and they ran a program there in in the summer. Then we found Hermione Gingold, there was a movie with her in it, and they filmed in the brownstone. Then it became the headquarters for the West Side march and for the March on

Washington [1963]. We kept finding people to come in and occupy it, because we couldn’t afford to have guards or to do it. But meanwhile the shutters all left, the nice hand-painted sinks were all demolished. And I remember being in a meeting in the seventies with young homeowners and I remember hearing someone say, “Did you—have you ever been up to Ninety- third Street? They have the nicest shutters.” [Laughs] It was really kind of rough. But we always had SRO projects, yes, even up in the 100s and around.

[01:08:06] I’m trying to think of some of the worst problems. And there was a housing project on

Columbus Avenue, right near where the school is at Ninety-second Street, and Beulah Sanders was the head of the committee or something. She was a big, heavy woman, strong. And she was part of George Wiley’s march—what was it called? something about, now I’m blanking on it.

But he was organizing people on welfare and people on public housing.

Eldridge – Session 1 of 2 38

[01:08:45] But she called me in the middle of the night: the elevator isn’t working, the lights aren’t working. You were just there and it was just consistent problems. And that hasn’t changed.

[01:08:58] And then on Ninety-third Street and Amsterdam Avenue, there’s another small pocket. What do we call—small public housing project. And the kids used to hang out in front.

And they had one motorcycle. It was a motorcycle gang, but there was only one motorcycle, but they all wore leather and they had bandanas, and there was a little kid with a bandana. And they were ferocious-looking to my children. Lucy tells the story—everybody was a little careful when you walked past it—but she’s walking on Amsterdam Avenue, she must have been twelve-year- old—and these guys are on the other side of the street. And one of them yells over, “Hey, you!”

And she thought oh, God, what’s going to happen. Right? He said, “You live on Ninety-third

Street, don’t you?” She said yes and he said, “Hi!” [chuckles] So, we learned early that it wasn’t always going to be dangerous. So it made a big difference, I think, in their outlooks on life, but I don’t know.

Vural: [01:09:55] When you moved to Sixty-seventh and Central Park West, so then at that point you’re only an avenue away from Columbus and from Lincoln Center, which obviously was really important in sort of changing the Upper West Side.

Eldridge: [01:10:09] Right, oh, I remember when Lincoln Center was being built. Larry

Eldridge was like a sidewalk builder. He would always take Danny in the stroller, every weekend, to keep track of what was happening then in the building and everything else. And I don’t remember the urban renewal problems or whatever, the condemnation of buildings, but it was pretty exciting to watch that build, right. So, that was one trip.

Eldridge – Session 1 of 2 39

[01:10:36] When we moved to Sixty-seventh Street—Columbus Avenue, there was a parking lot on the corner of Sixty-seventh and Columbus, but there were nice placed on Columbus and it was fine. ABC was there and we were next door to Café des Artistes. You didn’t have a problem over there. So, between Broadway and Central Park, it wasn’t a problem.

Vural: [01:10:58] Well, and people say that Columbus Avenue had been sort of the street where people got the services they needed who lived on Central Park West—

Eldridge: [01:11:12] Definitely.

Vural: [01:11:13] —like the dry cleaner—

Eldridge: [01:11:14] Yes.

Vural: [01:11:15] —and the shoemaker and the grocer.

Eldridge: [01:11:16] Right. And the eyeglasses and, yes, everything was there. It was very nice, and it was not intimidating. I don’t know what it was like up further. I remember Eighty-sixth and Columbus. It was pretty good, I think. And there were some nice stores between Seventy- ninth and Eighty-sixth [Streets]. Yes, Columbus Avenue was nice. Somebody working for me at the Port Authority said there were so many—I can’t remember exactly what he said, I have to think about it and I’ll tell you later—but that it was getting to so high-class [chuckles] that you didn’t—there were a lot of independent shopkeepers there with nice merchandise, also. That was what was nice about it, I think. There still are some. But then they become part of chains.

Vural: [01:12:16] Yes. Should we take a break for a minute?

Eldridge: [01:12:18] Yes.

Eldridge – Session 1 of 2 40

Vural: [01:12:20] I need a little break.

[INTERRUPTION]

Eldridge: [01:12:22] I’m going to think on more things. I’ll ask the kids also. The kids—they’re in their fifties now [chuckles].

Vural: [01:12:31] Yes, I mean, I’m their age. I was born in 1962.

Eldridge: [01:12:33] Yes. God. It’s incredible, [chuckles] I was just eighty-eight.

Vural: [01:12:41] Happy birthday to you.

Eldridge: [01:12:42] Thank you. And I was born on Franklin Roosevelt’s birthday, so that was another thing about politics.

Vural: [01:12:48] Tell me about that. I’ve heard you say that before.

Eldridge: [01:12:52] Where did I say it? You mean in the things all over? Well, because

Franklin Roosevelt’s birthday was the annual March of Dime’s ball—big fundraiser—and you couldn’t help but know about it. And I just felt this affinity. I mean I felt like I knew somebody in the White House instead of at City Hall [chuckle]. You know, so I was very proud of that.

Vural: [01:13:18] Is that something that your parents talked to you about?

Eldridge: [01:13:20] My parents were big Roosevelt fans and we were—I remember listening to the radio when he’d make his speeches. And I saw him on Broadway. He campaigned down

Broadway. There was a wonderful cartoon in PM newspaper—that was a very liberal newspaper—you’d see the back of everybody lining the street and there’s one person walking

Eldridge – Session 1 of 2 41 down the street and he had a big Dewey button on—because it was always such a Democratic stronghold—and Liberal Party, the Liberal Party was pretty big then too.

[01:13:59] And all of that came out of all this anti-communism stuff, which I’d lived through but

I never totally—I didn’t understand all the—it was crazy. It’s like what we have now. People lose their—it’s just crazy [chuckles]. And so we had that on the West Side.

Vural: [01:14:22] And were your parents, when you think back, were they raising you to be active in political—

Eldridge: [01:14:29] I think so, yes, definitely. And we had a ritual. I mean, they always—they loved that I went up to the Club and that I campaigned. And my mother in much later years, of course, had my petitions and—she lived here and then we moved her to The Esplanade Hotel at

Seventy-fourth Street when it was one of the first places—she hated it—hated it!

[01:14:57] This is just an extraneous story, but what’s his name? the late night—[David]

Letterman—he was talking about call me and he had this number that he gave, and he posted the number in and it was one digit off from my mother’s and so her phone rang all night long. And I don’t know how but somebody from one of the local stations found out and she had a companion with her and she was in a wheelchair, but she was always very stylish, and the elevator opens and her companion pushes the wheelchair out and there was this camera crew there. And so my mother started—they wanted to know what it was like to get the phone calls.

And my mother then started to say how she didn’t like this place. She said, “You know my daughter, don’t you? She’s a City Council woman! She put me here!” [Laughs] So, she was always pretty proud, but she was a mother, which I’m now like. You find that out?! It’s crazy.

Vural: [01:15:57] It’s shocking.

Eldridge – Session 1 of 2 42

Eldridge: [01:15:59] It is, totally. The Esplanade Hotel, I remember when it was a residential hotel. People lived there. I have a picture of a meeting there with Carmine DeSapio and a couple of other people, Lou Teller, who was the congressman, and me sitting there, very young, somewhere in the boxes of pictures I have.

Vural: [01:16:25] But when you think back, it was unusual for a girl to be kind of cultivated to be in the political world.

Eldridge: [01:16:31] In politics. And at the Club that I went to, there was a woman who was the co-leader—and historically the male district leader is the leader and the co-leader was the hostess and they were responsible for the food and, you know, doing this and doing that. But the woman who was the co-leader in my place was equally as strong as the male, and I liked her a lot. And she lived with her mother in the Bretton Hall Hotel, which was an old hotel at Eighty-sixth, it’s still there. And she was just very strong. She was a labor negotiator in the city government and she ran for the City Council and I ran her campaign against about seven men who were running for the City Council. And they were talking about swimming pools and the Hudson River and all kinds of stuff. She was talking about property taxes at Macy’s. This was in the seventies, I guess.

I don’t know. Sixties, no, seventies, no, sixties. I mean, she was serious, but nobody paid any attention to her. And she wasn’t even—the women weren’t even supportive of her. So, it’s come a long distance that way. The politics has changed. It’s interesting.

Vural: [01:17:51] So, I think we should stop for today.

Eldridge: [01:17:52] Okay.

Vural: [01:17:53] And I will be back.

Eldridge – Session 1 of 2 43

Eldridge: [01:17:54] Definitely. I will look forward to seeing you.

Vural: [01:17:57] Thank you.

[END OF SESSION]