Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1903-05-16
NEW YORK GOSSIP
A Fashionable WOmen's Sa-
loon and It's Career.
CAUSE OF DOWNFALL
SOCIETY WOMEN NOW KEEP A
REAL VALET.
Can Do Things That Maid Cannot
Can Do Things That Maid Cannot
acknowledgement Employment
of Servants-Scant Bathing Suit.
Special Correspondence Of The Evening Star.

clusively for women in a side street not
far from 9Th avenue aand near the center
of the town. 1t didn't look like saloon,
of course. 1t was on the first floor OF a
fine brown stone house that had been built
for a private residence. There was no
sign tackled outside the house to indicate
the nature of the business being carried
on within. This women's saloon was mag
nificently furnished. At the rear there was
a regular stand-up- and-drink cabinet bar
of onyx and mahogany. All of the rooms
had been thrown into one room, about
seventy-five feet deep. The floor was
richly carpeted. Ornate little drinking
tables. placed along the entire length of
the room in the center. formed two aisles,
one on either side of the room. The walls
were hung with old. soft-hued tapestries.
Two handsome white girls. graduate and
expert mixers of drinks, presided at the
cabinet bar. Half dozen tidy, capped and
aproned black girls attended to the needs
of the women customers who preferred to
sip at the tables. The second and third
floors of the house were sumptuously fur
nished as rest" rooms for the patrons of
the place. That. at any rate. is what the
proprietress of the novel establishment
called them-"rest" rooms, the implication
being that the lovely little apartments Of
fered quiet and ease for women wearied
after protracted shopping. 1t developed
that the rest rooms were often required
by women who were suffering from causes
other than the fatigue of shopping-but
that was only one of the developments.
Within week after this establishment
got under way it began to do a very large
business. Its patrons were all women of
means. No advertising was necessary of
course; no circulars were sent out; trade
was not solicited In any manner whatever
but the women heard of the place and they
looked 1t UP. Then they looked it up again
and again, saying that the half-light and
q n no a
with the soft music of the superb automatic
harp set in a niche in one of the walls,
soothed them-some women's words of self
excuse to each other are diaphanous
enough.
At First Carriage Trade"
At first it was carriage trade" alto
gether. Passing along the block in which
the women's saloon was located one might
easily have imagined-as, indeed many did
imagine-that some important marriage or
social function was going within the
somber, well-kept-loOking brownstone
house. for the entire square, and often the
square beyond, was lined with splendid
equpageS, and waiting coachmen paraded
their restless horses up and down the street
during all hours of the day-the place
closed promptly at clock in the evening
The neighbQrs of the propretress of the
womens saloon then got to complaining of
this carriage business on several grounds
carriages attracted to the square in the
first place. and the constant noise of the
horses feet on the hard pavement in the
second place They threatened to with
draw their signatures to the woman's IL
cense-the neighbors were mostly high
grade modistes. milliners, hairdressers. and
such like, doing business in houses that had
been formerly used as private residences
who had consented to the establishment of
the society women's saloon on the theory
that 1t would bring additional business to
the neighborhood.
The proprietress of the women's saloon
had to give ear to her neighbors' protests
So she requested her patrons not to come
to the place in carriages-to leave their car
riageS square or so away and walk to the
place, leaving directions with their coach
man as to the hour at which they desired
TO be picked up at the point where they had
left their carriages The patrons readily
agreed to this plan-and that was the be-
ginning of the end of the women's saloon.
Since the reason why it was the beginning
of the end may not be obvious to some sim
pie and wholesome minds, here is the ex-
PLANTATION: Some of the women patrons who
had been resting" and listening to the
/ gentle music OF the automatic harp, not
wisely but too WELL found 1t a comparative
/ ly easy matter to brace themselves for the
walk down the steps and across the side
walk to their carriage doors when their
carriages were allowed to draw up at the
curb In front of the women's saloon. But
these same women found 1t an entirely diff
ferent affair to walk two or three squares
in search of their carriages number of
them, indeed quite forgot the location of
the point at which they had instructed their
coachmen to pick them up. Not few of
them became hopelessly lost and had to
appeal to policemen to get cabs for them
Several. indeed, wound up in police sta
tons, in all of their finery and jewelry and
had to send for their husbands or other
male relatives to get them out" when they
came to under the ministrations of the
police matrons.
Beginning of the End.
On top of this a number of men of posi-
ton, whose wives had yielded often to the
pleadings of the automatic harp-with the
trimmings-visited the women's saloons in
various stages of fury and made violent
scenes there when they found their wives
in state of incompetency. And then one
of the women reporters got into the place
with a well-concealed camera and executed
a thing of the kind called Sunday story
about 1t and It's patrons That settled it,
me place was suddenly closed. and police
officials high in authority state that there
Will be no more exclusively womens sa-
looms in New York for some years to come
The women of riches and leisure who find
their days gray and dull without the aid of
stimulants. and who are precuded for va
rious reasons from indulging in edge-pro-
ducing liquids in their homes, will have to
continue to resort-as the women of that
many yearS-to the private rooms of their
dressmakers and milliners for their drains,
or else frankly absorb the glamor- develop
ing decoctions in the luncheon rooms of
the swagger hotels.
In connection with this latter custom Of
women candidly ordering cocktails and
frappes and smashes and drinks of such
heady descriptions in the hotel luncheon
rooms 1t Is opportune to state that a new
rule for the good of such women has been
promulgated at one of the great hyphen-
ated hotels of New York. This rule is that
no woman. no matter how high her degree
nor whether she Is a wealthy guest of the
hotel or not. shall be served with more than
two alcoholic drinks nor more than one pint
B of champagne. II she be alone in any of
the hotels luncheon or dining rooms
sharp-eyed woman attendant has been in
stalled at the entrances to all of the lunch
con rooms. whose function II is to observe
whether any of the women entering the
luncheon rooms carry indications of having
INDUCED unwisely in stimulants elsewhere.
Such women are politely informed that II
viii be impossible to serve them with
drinks. The hotels new rule was made
necessary on account of a number of I'M
, pleasant scenes which had been created In
the luncheon rooms by women who had
drunk themselves to sundry and divers
stages OF alcoholic hysteria. All of which
Is gruesome and depressing enough, but as
they saw over here in feehla tfor