My Days of Faded Elegance

Life In the Hawthorne In the 1970s

It wasn’t lawyers chasing the ambulances to the door of the Hawthorne in the Central West End of St. Louis in the 1970s, when I lucked into my place there. It was apartment hunters.

The Hawthorne was the sort of building with no 13^th floor – bad luck, you know - where apartments only came open due to death – good luck for those hoping to move in. Snagging an apartment there did not depend so much on a daily perusal of the Apartments For Rent classifieds as the Obituaries. Someone – likely a resident since the ‘20s, ‘30s, ‘40s – had to move on to their Mansion in Heaven, to make room for you to find a place in the faded elegance of that dusty dried arrangement of a building. When an ambulance pulled up to the door – which was happening more often by the late ‘70s as the promise of eternity matured for more and more of the original residents – word telegraphed through the neighborhood: Time to update apartment applications, don’t dawdle. If you longed for the Hawthorne life, you rushed down the street, in hope. Hope often dashed, but sometimes not, and the Johnnys-on-the-spot with those updated applications (and deposit checks) stood the best chance of passing through that pearly portal.

That’s how I got my studio – a lightening fast application almost as the hearse drove off. It also helped that I reminded Mrs. Peacock, the manager, of her grandson. (She may have become dismayed by the resemblance as the years passed.)

By the mid-‘70s I was ready to move up, literally, to my 17^th floor Hawthorne studio, after a couple of years in a seedy rooming house a couple of blocks further east on West Pine, a place where I “existed” in a two-room garret with all the grit of La Bohème and none of the romance – two blocks further from Forest Park, two blocks closer to the decay that had once been the bustling Grand Boulevard of our now moth-eaten metropolis.

My tiny studio, on the top floor looking south, had high ceilings, and terrazzo floors, and oh what a view – out over the glistening hospital towers in the Medical Center, and the vast expanse of South Saint Louis beyond. Unfortunately, the Murphy bed had disappeared long before I moved in, but the original bathroom fixtures remained (a good thing), and the gas range in the kitchen had been replaced with gas, not converted to electricity, as so often happened in old buildings (a bad thing).

Giraffes on my walls and bed.

I “papered” the walls with fabric, a fabulous Pierre Frey historic reproduction on a giraffe theme – gift of a boyfriend who did showrooms for Famous-Barr Department store, downtown, and sometimes salvaged (and shared) the remnants. I still have the bedspread my mother made from the same print. I painted the moldings deep green to match, and had Roman shades in a rich yellow silk – thanks again boyfriend, for teaching me what Roman shades were (and so much more), and mother, for sewing them. I managed to squeeze a trestle table and four rush-seated ladder-back chairs into the dining alcove, perfect for intimate chic dinner parties, of which there were some. (I did a crisply mean fried chicken even then.) I ignored the rule, and Mrs. Peacock let me slide on it, that declared one MUST have rugs to muffle noise – which led to stern looks from my downstairs neighbor when one of my guests, in his exuberance (our exuberance), sent a bedside lamp crashing to the terrazzo floor one morning about two.

The Hawthorne, built in 1928, stood as an elegant remnant from pre-crash days (that's pre-stock market crash, not bedside lamp). It was already 50 years old when I moved in, and slightly faded, perhaps, but still boasting stately public rooms with bronze sculptures on mahogany tables; big French doors and gilt framed mirrors; brass-fitted elevators; and a doorman (A DOORMAN!) named Jimmy. He may not have approved of all the goings-on of the “new” tenants - mostly young gay men helping to make the Central West End the Greenwich Villagey gay ghetto of the city at the time – but he never objected, even if you and your new friend (or some nights, new friends) might be a little tipsy (or a little high) as you pushed through the revolving door after midnight – so long as you kept it quiet and didn’t disturb the other tenants – mostly older single ladies who’d lived in the Hawthorne for years, even decades, and objected to loud crashes in the night.

I lived in the Hawthorne for going on five years. On the whole, I fit in pretty well, aside from the night of the flying lamp, and maybe another incident or two: a drink-fueled altercation with a neighbor (until then friend; it became physical) who thought I’d caused trouble with his boyfriend (some fellows are SO touchy about infidelities); and the occasional after-disco party that grew a bit too festive. I even started wearing rubber-souled shoes to help with the no-rugs noise issue. Jimmy and I grew so close that once he gave me one of his cigars – my first – and insisted that we light up together, like the bros we’d become. Though as I coughed, I suspected this was his revenge for my never quite clicking to the Christmas tipping thing.

I’ve written some pieces set in the Hawthorne (“Bee Sting, Heart Ache,” “Solitary Afternoons,” “Soft Breathing In the Night”) though these are completely fictional; at least that’s what I tell my husband. Probably I’d be there still, maybe in a slightly larger apartment now that I’m married, if I hadn’t left to go to grad school in Texas. When I got back to St. Louis a year later, Mrs. Peacock never seemed to have an opening when I stopped by to ask. Could it have been that deep green molding she had to paint over for the tenant who followed me? Or one too many flying lamps? Whatever it was, I never achieved the Hawthorne life again, no matter how closely I read the obituaries. Never again bronze sculptures; never again brass fittings; never again terrazzo floors; never again a doorman (peace be with you, Jimmy bro).

But at least for those few years I lived my life of faded Hawthorne elegance.

Thanks to the wonders of the internet, I see - even without that Pavlovian siren rush downstairs - that my old 17th floor pied-à-terre is available. Wonder who died? (Thank God it wasn't me!)

If I'd won the lottery last night, I think I'd rent it again, even though I don't live in St. Louis anymore. For old time sake. Because, for me at least, ...

“In short there’s simply not/ A more congenial spot/For happy-ever-aftering than …”

… the faded elegance of the Hawthorne in the ‘70s.