Literary afternoon featuring Ferber, Hurst, hosted by Astor 

March is Women’s History Month. Our site always centers women’s history; this month we’ll do so a bit more emphatically.

One hundred years ago today, Edna Ferber and Fanny Hurst, two writers in the early stages of extremely successful careers, gave readings their work, including in-progress works, at a benefit hosted by Helen Astor (née Helen Dinsmore Huntington).

Hurst has appeared a few times on our site, such our post about June 4, 1920. To Ferber, we will return later in 1921. 

The “literary afternoon,” as it was billed, was the first in a series to benefit the Goodhue Home for Convalescent Children, now called the Goodhue Center, located at 304 Prospect Avenue in Staten Island

Event host Helen Astor was a philanthropist and patron of the arts. Born Helen Dinsmore Huntington, she married Vincent Astor, heir to Jacob Jacob Astor IV’s fortune, in 1914. The two led mostly separate lives. Her friend the writer Glenway Wescott called her “a grand old lesbian” in an unpublished letter.

The News article mentions that the next such event would be hosted by “Mrs. John T. Pratt” who, as vice-chair, introduced the readers. This was Ruth Baker Pratt (née Ruth Sears Baker), who would become the woman to serve on the Board of Alderman for New York City (in 1925), and the first woman elected to NY State’s delegation to the House of Representatives (in 1929). 

The March 15 reading was held at the Astors’ mansion at 840 5th Avenue. Perhaps everyone gathered in this room.

A series of photographs of the house and its interior is yours for the peeping at the Daytonian in Manhattan website.

Here’s what the building exterior looked like from 1925, one year before its demolition.

– Jonathan Goldman, March 15, 2021

TAGS: Women’s history month, women writers, women in politics, novelists, lgbtq, literature, readings, philanthropy, politics, elections, charity, architercture