The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1901-06-09
GIRL COLONIES IN NEW YORK.
How They Remodel Apartment
Houses.
lice X. Fallows in Ainslee's.


Alice X Fallows in AinsIee's.
Girl households, once established. be-
came a permanent factor In New York
The number of them increased from
year to year, until now hundreds of
women are finding in the various girl
colonies of New York q modest ideal of
comfort, which makes metropolitan eX-
perience very pleasant one. Apart
ment houses seem to have been. built
particularly for the convenience of self
supporting women. They are suited to
every grade of ambition and to every
kind of income. IF the group of pros
pective householders is Indifferent to spa
cious entrances and stately halls, and is
willing to obey the summons of the
ghost lock for each chance caller or err
rand bCv, and has no deep-Set objection
to the West side above Fifty-ninth street
the treasurer may set aside $50 or so
for the rent of five or six rooms. A hall
boy adds to the rent, and an elevator IN
an apartment house is likely to bring
the rent for the least desirable apart
ment in it to 500 per month.
Grandeur and large prices are not es-
sential to the ordinary girl colonist.
When she has been tossed about from
boarding house to boarding house long
enough she appreciates the modest little
S35 home under the roof quite as much
after she has climbed four flights OF
stairs to reach ii. as if She had hoated
up to fashionable hundred-dollar
apartment in an elevator.
Girl colonists are quick-witted in
adapting apartments to their use. If
the group is too large for one, they take
two, three, four or even half a dozen. If
necessary. The housekeeper is confined
10 one, and the other apartments are
fitted up as sleeping rooms and sitting
rooms in a way that causes q conVen-
tional housekeeper to open their eyes.
BY the time such a one has made a tour
of all the rooms belonging to a girl col
OnY, and finds no bed. bureau or chif-
fonier in one of them, she begins to won
der If these Young women have discOV-
Of T8Tifl Gle
until some one explains to her that the
Bagdad-covered couch piled high with
cushions on which she is sitting is in
reality q woven wire cot, with a com
Portable hair mattress, which serves as
an excellent bed.
Indeed, to any one unaccustomed to
the ways of girl colonists. 1t seems as If
most OF the inanimate objects in sight
were engaged in a masquerade ball. A
curtain drawn aside from what seems
to be a bookcase disclOses shelves filled
with all the articles which furnish a
model dressing table. The dining room
sideboard becomes thing of beauty
with curtains, casts and bric-a-brac in
charming room that gives no hint Of
It's real purpose I'm the plan of the apart
ment Where colony includes general
apartments in its menage and puts only
the dining room and one kitchen to its
proper USE two or three must be con-
room lends itself easily to the transfer
nation. But the kitchen. which seems
quite hopeless at the first glance, often
becomes the prize room of the house. If
the landlord proves accommodating and
removes the range, the laundry tubs and
the sink the, occupant of the kitchen
can furnish it as she could any other
room. But If he IS crusty and declines
20 interfere with anything in the kitchen,
n little ingenuity is all that is needed to
make the kitchen a most alluring place.
The range. in the first place. draped with
some pretty material. makes a conven-
lent dressing table, and the oven. as a
substitute for a shoe bag. cannot be
SURPASSED. The laundry tubs. well COW
cred. become a desk, on which one
might write a poem oF a ten-volume
bookcase. Some rich tapestry or drapery