I’m tremendously grateful to my agent Kate McKean for saying to me a few years ago, “Why not write a book about a women’s hotel? And why don’t we meet at the library to discuss it?” In the twelve years we have worked together, she has been the source of a number of excellent ideas, of which these two are merely the latest in a long line. I owe a great deal to her equanimity, curiosity, and patience, and could not have written this book without her.
I’m also indebted to my editor Rakesh Satyal and his careful eye, which is ever-bent on ventilation and motion, who often guided me out of stuffy rooms and into the open air.
I’m grateful to the library staff at the General Research Division at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building in New York, which enabled me to research, among other things, subway posters, newspapers, restaurant menus, and advertisements for women’s hotels of the mid-twentieth century. This book owes a great deal to the public library system.
I’d like to thank The Mastheads in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, for granting me the residency that enabled me to finish this book, and in particular for the bracing and invigorating support of my cohort there: Auyon Mukharji, Elisa Gonzalez, Julia Mounsey, Kristina Gaddy. What a gift it has been to come to know you marvelous strangers.
And to my partners, Grace Lavery and Lily Woodruff: Women are such a pleasure to live with and to think about. I am very lucky it has been granted to me to live with and think about you.