I moved to Manhattan when I was 12 years old and at the time I was one of three teenagers in Stuyvesant Town. There were a few Latino girls but there were no blacks. The South side of Stuyvesant was much less affluent. Not that the people in Stuyvesant Town were rich, but the people on the south side had much less. You could see it by the way they dressed.
I went to Washington Irving High School. At the time was very good. I majored in art and I became very good friends with several black girls in my art class. Barbara Ney, I think that was her name.
Barbara and a couple of other black girls would come home to my house from school to come home for lunch or to listen to records. I had a variety of friends – Italian and Polish the black girls who came to that school from Harlem and Jamaica because there were no black people in the neighborhood. And my mother welcomed them. In fact, when there was a transit strike one of the girls stayed over in the house because she couldn’t get home. No problem.
Then sometime when I was in high school, there was a big brouhaha in Stuyvesant Town. People were being evicted because they were subletting to blacks. And my mother sat me down, and she said “You know, I have nothing against blacks, Barbara Ney or any of the other girls you bring home. But I am afraid of being evicted. They can’t come over anymore.”
That just devastated me. It didn’t make sense to me. She’s my friend why can’t she come over here anymore? My mother was terrified! She didn’t want to be evicted. So that was the end of my friendship with these black girls who were interested in the same thing I was, fashion illustration and dress designing.
There was never an influx of any kind of minority in Peter Cooper or Stuyvesant Town. I left the area when I was 21, I was married and we moved to Long Island. After I left my husband and came back to Stuyvesant Town my neighbor on my left was from Venezuela and my neighbor on my right from the Philippines. But I don’t remember seeing many black people or Hispanic people come to think of it.
Bargain Bazaar
I don’t know if you’ve seen 14th street lately. But there was a whole block from Avenue a to Ave B was demolished. There was a Rainbow store and Rite Aid. My favorite was called Bargain Bazaar. In the 1980’s I was looking for pillowcases and I went to Bloomingdales they were too damn expensive. And then I found Bargain Bazaar. I went there once a week to buy all my things, my bath mats, kitchen towels. And I sorely miss that place.
I would love to be an interior decorator but at my age its too hard. But I have half a dozen curtains that I bought in that place. And they’re all so pretty. You couldn’t find prettier ones in Bed, Bath and Beyond or any other place. And they were all so cheap.
