Life at the Dakota by Stephen Birmingham

Author:Stephen Birmingham
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504026314
Publisher: Open Road Media

Part Four

BOYS AND GIRLS TOGETHER

Where else the bounty of an age

Where space was undivided?

Where else the stately Otis cage

By gentlewomen guided?…

FROM “Ballad of the Dakota”

Chapter 13

Nuts and Bolts

Like small towns and large cities everywhere, now that the Dakota was a fiscal entity of its own, no longer able to rely on Clark benevolence, one of the biggest problems the building faced was how to pay for the services it offered. What it had cost to staff and maintain the Dakota had never seemed to matter to the Clarks at all, and when the new resident-owners looked at the figures they came as something of a blow. In 1961, for example, the building had forty-five full-time employees, including three resident employees, or roughly one employee for every two tenant families—a crew-passenger ratio that had once been the boast of the old Queen Mary. To be sure, these people individually didn’t earn much in salaries—salaries seemed to have been frozen, like the rents, at an 1880’s level—and were making only $64 to $108 a week. Still, their wages added up to an annual payroll of about $225,000 a year, which seemed a staggering sum. The number of staff, it was decided, would have to be slashed by about one half.

It was a difficult and painful moment. Dismissing an old and trusted employee is never a pleasant task, and many of the Dakota’s staff had never worked anywhere else, had grown old along with the tenants, considered the Dakota their home as well and were more like old family friends. The Dakota’s maids and porters had baby-sat for Dakota families in their spare time, had run special errands, had moonlighted as butlers, bartenders and canapé-passers at Dakota parties. Still, in the name of economy, something had to be done, and the Dakotans consoled themselves with the thought that, after all, these people would have their pensions to live on.

So it was still another blow when the Dakotans discovered that the Clark family had never instituted any sort of employee pension or retirement plan at all. Nor had the Clark Foundation. Once more, the Dakotans appealed to the Foundation on the employees’ behalf.

American charitable foundations, it has often been pointed out, may be in the business of dispensing large sums of money to the needy and the deserving, but in terms of the people who work for them they are notoriously tight. The Clark Foundation turned out to be no exception. When it was brought to the Foundation’s attention that these longtime employees had served the family and the Foundation well and deserved some sort of pension, the Foundation huffed and puffed. For weeks it dragged its heels, claiming that it had “no obligation” to the Dakota’s staff. The Dakota again approached Stephen Clark’s widow who, though she had no decision-making power, agreed to lend her influence to the cause. Finally, and with great reluctance, the Foundation agreed to establish a pension fund. It did so very begrudgingly and not at all graciously, writing

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