I don't believe Martha Washington slept here, since the hotel didn't open until 1903, but staying at the Martha Washington Hotel in Manhattan means checking into a little bit of women's history. I'm visiting New York, solo, for a writing conference and couldn't pass up the chance to do just that.
This hotel was, when it opened, the first hotel exclusively for women....or so say Wikipedia and the hotel's website. I don't know if that's the first in the world, the first of all time, or just the first in New York in the 20th century. Poet Sara Teasdale stayed here. So did actress Louise Brooks. It was headquarters for a women's suffrage group.
Men were allowed to come to breakfast, at least. These days, everyone's crowding into Marta in the lobby.
Apparently, the hotel back then was a no-nonsense place for serious women. Brooks allegedly said, "I was asked to leave the Martha Washington, because people in a building overlooking the hotel had been shocked to see me on the roof, exercising in 'flimsy pajamas.'"
At the moment, I'm typing in my flimsy pajamas, tucked away in a room that seems the perfect sort of no-nonsense place for a single lady, train compartment-like with a single bed, a small desk and chair, and compact bathroom.
Earlier, I was having dinner at the lobby restaurant, Marta, and feeling lucky to snag an open seat at the pizza bar without much of a wait (an advantage of being a solo traveler staying at the Martha Washington). That space was designed by a female architect--Annabelle Seldorf. In this article, she answers one of the questions I had: Where does the smoke from the two wood-fired pizza ovens go?