Building History
The following article was written by Amy Wilson for the Fall 1998 of The Language, the student newspaper of Eugene Lang College.
The Little Known History of Marlton
Jack Kerouac
Lenny Bruce
Lillian Gish
Maggie Smith
Mickey Rourke
Valerie Solanas
For many students at the New School, the Marlton House is nothing more than any other college dormitory, For the 114 students who live there, the Marlton is a cramped home away from home, complete with roommate problems, mice, late night parties, and stressful study sessions, What many don't know, however, is that before it became a school dorm, Marlton had a colorful past. If you were to strip away the excess layers of paint from the walls and fixtures, pull up the carpeting and scrape off the years of city dirt and grime, you would find ornate plaster work, hardwood and marbled floors, and mosaic tiling that have witnessed a rich history of lives pass in and out of the building through the years. These were the lives of people who are now cultural icons, but made up Greenwich Village's population during its peak "bohemian" years.
Greenwich Village once served as a virtual center of life for the city: a vibrant, creative and cultural community that impacted the lives of everyone who experienced it, as well as its con-sequential influence on the evolution of American society as a whole, From pimps and prostitute; glamorous film stars, jazz musicians, and beatniks, up through the 80's punk rockers, the Marlton House has been well acquainted with them all.
The Marlton Hotel, as it was called until the New School took over the lease in 1987, was built in 1900 and existed as an SRO (Single Room Occupancy), transient hotel. The guests were more like boarders and stayed for periods of weeks, months, or even years at a time. In fact, up until the late 60's and 70's when bigger, chain-owned hotels came into being, most hotels operated in this fashion with shared bathrooms on each floor as well as a central dining room and lobby area that promoted a community quality of living. This (and the hotels' relative affordability for the struggling actors, writers, and musicians who were arriving constantly in the city in search of work) resulted in hotel living becoming a practical trend.
And arrive they did. Just ask Carl Montgomery, who has lived and worked at the Marlton for 29 years, from 1954 to 1983. Though retired now, he has held positions as desk clerk, manager, and lease holder, in succession. As he lists the impressive number of celebrities who made an appearance at the hotel over the years either as guests or visitors, it's difficult for him not to leave someone out. According to Carl, actors and actresses starting with Lillian Gish, who was one of the most prominent figures in silent films, stayed in the Marlton from 1911 to 1912 in room 408. After Gish followed John Barrymore, Kay Francis, Maggie Smith, John Neville, Claire Bloom, Julie Andrews, and Mickey Rourke. Of Rourke, Carl remarks that he lived on the ninth floor and was "such a slob that the maids refused to go into his room".
Famous vocalists included Miriam Mekeba and jazz greats Carmen McRae and Esther Sutherland. Writers and poets included Delmore Schwartz, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Beat writers Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Neil and Carolyn Cassedy. Schwartz, says Carl, was nearing the end of his career when he stayed at the Marlton, was paranoid, and "in bad shape emotionally." He was subsequently kicked out for throwing an ashtray at a manager which was just as well, "he was a terrible poet anyway".
A few of the visitors who often just hung out in the lobby of the hotel were Geraldine Page, Harry Belafonte, and Candy Darling – the now famous drag queen from Andy Warhol’s crowd. Also a guest at the Marlton from the Warhol gang was Valerie Solanas, who was actually residing there in room 214 at the time she shot Warhol in 1968. Says Carl, "I thought he deserved it- he treated people abominably and didn’t pay them [for all the work they did from him]". In Addition, comedian Lenny Bruce, who stayed in room 470, had a major influence in Carl’s life. "there isn’t anything in the world I would not have done for him," he says if Bruce. "He was warm, kind, and generous- just a wonderful person."
To simply list the names, however, hardly does justice to Carl’s experience, because it is obvious when listening to him re count the fascinating details of his interaction with each of these figures, just how cherished his time at the Marlton was. As he says, life at the hotel was a community experience. "If a [resident] was playing in a night club, we all went to see it... We went to plays quite often... [and on Sunday nights], to "The Bonsoir,’ a very popular nightclub that was just down the street here [that often featured] Barbara Streisand and Mabel Mercer.
Carl took his work at the hotel very seriously, as he says he was "very protective of the hotel and its people. Like a family, you have to take care of them". This meant everything from screening phone class and lending out money, to doing errands for residents and packing the belongings of the likes of Lenny Bruce. However, Carl doesn’t hide the fact that he partied with the best of them. "There was a TV and sofas in the lobby, and at night it was kind of wild, especially in the period with Andy Warhol. I looked forward to going to work. We had so much fun and it was safe. A couple of times I quit, but I always came back. I even raised my kids here."
From the first time Carl laid eyes on the Marlton Hotel with its stately gray and green striped window awnings, as it used to have, he says he "couldn't forget it" and decided that he wanted to work there. This was in 1941, just after Carl got out of the war, when he used to frequent 'The Jumble Shop', which was a restaurant in the neighborhood that appealed to Thomas Wolfe as well. It that period and on into the 50's, the area around West 8th Street, or Clinton Place as it was known for a time, Carl describes as "a small town with more people" that had three or four different restaurants on the block, as well as a few nightclubs. Megan Heinze, the current Residence Director of the building who is also working with Carl on a project that would allow interested students to learn more about Marlton's history, further explains that the area was comparable to "Newbury Street in Boston today, with boutiques and an active night life with jazz clubs."
The interior of the building was different, as well, and even more noticeably so. The lobby used to include both the floor space to the shoe store and aquarium on either side of what exists now. The shoe store used to be a large dining room until about the 1940's, with chefs and waitresses. The other side of the lobby was more of a lounge area with floor to ceiling mirrors, sofas, and chandeliers that, Carl notes, used to be powered by gas. At that time, the lobby floors and steps plainly bore the marble that has long since been carpeted over. As Megan remarks wistfully about the hotel, "If you tore off those carpets, you would find some beautiful things." She describes the mosaic tiling, the hardwood floors, a brass mail chute, and other ornamentation that lies under layers of paint and, again, the carpeting that was put down for safety reasons and noise control, but was installed rather crudely with a glue that ruined the floors underneath. Megan, who has lived at the Marlton as a student, a Residence Advisor, and now Residence Director, is clearly as attached to the hotel as Carl is. Both speak of the building with such eagerness and passion that the Marlton Hotel emerges from their descriptions as almost a magical place. Such is obvious in Megan's detailing of the Murphy beds that used to be in the hotel. "I love to look at the extra large closet in my room and think somebody used to pull a bed out of that."
Carl, in his tales of the Marlton Hotel, does touch briefly on some of its more sordid, if not sensational, history. "A lot of creepy people have stayed here", he admits. This includes a man who Car] describes as a more than slightly disturbed "Veteran S.O.B." who, one day, brought a gun into the hotel, picked an argument with a front desk clerk, and then walked to the to the top of the lobby stairs, turned around and shot him between the eyes. The clerk, at the time of the shooting, had ironically been reading Truman Capote's In True Blood. Plus, much to Carl's chagrin, the Veteran only served out a short sentence in a mental hospital before he showed up at the hotel again wanting to be checked in. Carl also talks about several overdoses in the building and hints about the gangster involvement in the hotel that had something to do with an incident of a "staged phony robbery", that served to "ruff up [the current lease holder] to get the lease from her". Amazingly, Carl speaks of being held up thirteen times, but says that the neighborhood was basically a safe one. Mostly, the times he had to worry about were those that involved very drunk people on the roof. "We had a lot of fun on the roof at times. I was always afraid, though, someone might get belligerent and push someone off". Plus, he explains the hotel had a very good relationship with the police. "They had free rooms whenever they wanted them- cops came in and slept on cots during their breaks. They were very fast to help if there was any trouble."
Today, Carl says that the students who reside in the building are very nice and there aren't many problems. He does say that for a time there were a few female prostitutes who lived on the 7th or 8th floor, but life at Marlton appears relatively calmer now than in its pre-New School years. Megan does add, however, that until his death last year, one of the first, more widely known, transvestite performers named Theodore Bandis, who's stage name was ''Chee Chee Legs Laverne" lived in room 815.
With such an extensive history to the building and with so many colorful personalities in its past, it is understandable that the little talk there is from students about the building today is sprinkled with rumors of a leftover "boarder" who exists alongside the New School residents and the 15 other permanent tenants including- a ghost. When questioned, Megan didn't deny that these stories are around, but she hasn't heard much about them. Regarding their truthfulness, she essentially said that, as far as she knows, nothing has ever occurred to prove them. "There are a lot of legends at Marlton, just as there are in other buildings with such rich histories. It's not as if I'm totally dismissing the idea of ghosts in general, it's just that we don't necessarily have a problem with a ghost in Marlton.
For those who believe the rumors and those who don't, both seem to agree that there exists a kind of spiritual presence in the building that comes from the years, both gone and still to come, filled with people who have made the Marlton their home, their livelihood, and their social community. As Megan adds, "It's easy to set yourself back and get into the history of the building. I'm able to let my imagination go to whatever time I want." And for the students who live there now, it may still be just a dorm, but the collective experience and community they share at Marlton simply keeps the spirit of the building very much alive. This is an experience that, like of those before them, will remain a part of their lives forever.