From its founding in 1902 to around 1952, the Three Arts
Club in New York City served a noble purpose – to house young women who were
pursuing careers in the arts.
The three arts referred to music, art and drama, and the Club provided dormitory
style housing, meals and an environment in which these young women would be
among people experiencing the same struggles and frustrations (and sometimes
success).
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| The Three Arts Club at 340 W 85th St, NYC in 1910. This building was replaced in 1927. |
According to an article about the Three Arts published in
the Los Angeles Herald newspaper in 1909, there were four rules of admission
(quoted):
- All applicants must be studying with a view toward self support or working in one of the arts.
- They must be under 30 years of age.
- They must furnish at least two satisfactory references.
- Admittance only by application card.[i]
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| Patricia Bunting's head shot |
In 1909 the charge was $7 per week for room, meals and “use
of the laundry two days of the seven.”[ii] There were resident chaperones and the
management and direction of the club was taken on by New York society
matrons. The young women in
residence shared the household work and provided one another with support – it
was challenging for young women to break into the arts and they could rely on
one another for a sympathetic ear or word from the street about opportunities
for work.
In July 1930, at the age of 17, my grandmother, Patricia
Bunting, joined the Three Arts Club and began to pursue a career as an
actress. Born in Manitoba, Canada,
Patricia was the daughter of a banker from Toronto and a socialite from
Montreal. She had older twin
brothers and one younger brother.
The family moved about, due to her father’s job, but he progressed and
did well in the bank and outside financial investments, settling, finally, in
Montreal. They built a large
house, had servants and all the children went to various prep and boarding
schools in Quebec. However, their
lifestyle changed significantly with the Stock Market crash.
“Came the crash! 1930! The family fortunes collapsed completely. The house was rented – positions were found for the servants & we moved into an apartment in Drummond Court. From there, in July ’30 I moved to New York.”
A young socialite in her own right, Patricia suddenly had to
make her own way – college was now out of the question and her new goal in life
was to earn a living as an actress.
And so, no doubt through family contacts, she obtained a space at the
Three Arts Club at 340 West 85th Street in New York, obtained her
visa and immigrated to the United States.
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| Patricia's entry VISA |
One young woman who lived there in 1931, Virgina Condict,
was studying drawing at Parson’s and described the atmosphere and experience of
the Three Arts:
“It was close to Parson's [and] to a subway station. It was only half a block from Riverside Drive and a short walk to Central Park. There was a big studio on the top floor of the Three Arts Club, and that is where I did my assignments. That big studio room at the Three Arts Club was used for meetings as well as art projects. Professional artists would come to give talks to the art students. It was a thrill to meet well-known artists and illustrators whose work we admired in current magazines. One evening, the famous muralist, Diego Rivera, came with his tiny wife, dressed in her native costume. There were other cultural advantages to living at the Three Arts Club. Sometimes we received free tickets to Broadway plays or concerts. The theater managers wanted to keep the seats filled. The tickets might be just for a dress rehearsal, or they might be in the topmost balcony, but we didn't care when we could see stars like Helen Hayes in Victoria Regina and Mary Martin in Peter Pan!”[iii]
We don’t know when my grandmother left the Three Arts Club,
but she was certainly there in 1931 when this account was contemporary. According to my Uncle Robert, her
youngest son, she was so poor that she couldn’t afford to eat out, so she went
on dates to socialize and get a good meal. She told Uncle Robert stories of dating Howard Hughes, who
took her to the 21 Club wearing dinner jacket, bow tie and sneakers. And of a newly-arrived actor just off
the boat from Britain whom she had to fight off at the door after their date
(David Niven). She told the story
of having a non-dating male friend who was a wine distributor who had to eat at
various restaurants in New York that carried his wines, so he often took her as
his dining companion. She arrived in New York in 1930, but Prohibition ended in 1933, so her dinners with her wine merchant friend clearly took place between 1933 and 1936, the year of her marriage. It’s tough to know if she would have
patronized any of New York’s famous speakeasies during prohibition – she
arrived in New York at the age of 17 and Prohibition ended when she was 20.
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| Skiing on Mount Royal in Quebec five months before moving to NY. |
She did have calling cards made up (they were an ubiquitous
accessory to any young woman of the time) at Lord & Taylor and she found
success, not as an actress, but as a model. Again according to Uncle Robert,
she was a Dunhill girl for the Dunhill fashion house and further family legend
has it that she participated in the opening ceremony for Rockefeller Center as
a figure skater on the new ice rink – they must have been thrilled to find a
model from Canada who was adept at winter sports!
In 1936 she married my grandfather, Bud Woodruff, and she
began married life, leaving the high glamour, impoverished world of her time at
the Three Arts Club behind her.
She retained the poise and bearing of her modeling days throughout her
life. She always dressed strikingly,
and when I knew her, in her late 40s and young 50s, she was rail thin, ramrod
upright and she always struck me as tall and elegant. She died at the age of 53, my grandfather Bud having
pre-deceased her by eleven years.
Patricia’s experiences in New York in the early 30s were emblematic
of a young woman raised in a household of moderate wealth who had lost
everything (as so many did during the Depression). She maintained her poise and social awareness throughout her
entire life, but she also adapted to her new circumstances.
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| Patricia Bunting Woodruff as I remember her, in her young 50s |
This story was pieced together from numerous sources over
the years and is a classic example of writing a family story from multiple
types of information. Patricia
herself left notes that she wrote about her life, which provided some of the
key information. She talked about
her life in New York with her son, my Uncle Robert, who provided more detail. But she never mentioned the Three Arts
Club – I found that information in her immigration record, which specified that
was where she would reside in New York.
I then found a few references to Three Arts online, but not as much as I
would like. I can’t help but think
that the Three Arts Club was the source of inspiration for the Footlights Club
boarding house from the 1937 classic film, Stage Door, starring Katharine
Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Eve Arden and Lucille Ball.
The Three Arts Club information fills in the blanks of how my
grandmother lived from her arrival in New York to the time of her marriage, six
years later, and I would not have know about it but for her immigration
records. I didn’t know how to go
about locating her records, so I called the experts at the New England Historic
and Genealogical Society. They
sent me in the direction of the Immigration Services website, where there is an
entire section on genealogical research.
There are several steps to requesting your ancestors’ immigration and
naturalization information:
You must provide them with the file numbers for the records
you want, so the first step is to request a search of their index to obtain the
file numbers. Because the index
information is confidential, it is not searchable by the general public. You make the request in writing,
providing as much relevant information as possible and they send you a letter
providing the detail of the records they were able to locate. In my case, the search took about six
weeks and revealed that there were two available records: Patricia’s
immigration record in 1930 and her naturalization record in 1948.
The next step is to submit a request for the records you
want, along with a fee for each record.
See their website for the current fee structure.[iv] They state that the turnaround time is
about 90 days, but it took just over 12 months for my records to arrive in the
mail. I had given up hope that I’d
get them, but they were well worth the wait! They provided me with photographs of my grandmother I’d
never seen before and all the detail that allowed me to complete this
story. Patricia was my only recent
immigrant ancestor and I was very pleased to have such great detail of her move
to this country.
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| Patricia Bunting's extended family network, showing all the descendants of one set of her great-grandparents as of 1985 |
Sources:
[i] “Three Arts
Club Is New York Home for Stage Novices,” by W. Herbert Blake, Los Angeles
Herald, June 25, 1909, p. 8
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Beer,
Virigina Condict von Phul, http://www.lifescapesmemoirs.net/beer/memories1/beer10.htm
[iv] US
Citizenship and Immigration Services Genealogy Page: https://www.uscis.gov/genealogy
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