Today, AD is welcomed by Gloria Steinem to tour her longtime home in New York City. The feminist icon moved into her duplex in a 19th-century brownstone in 1968 after the breakout success of her 1963 Playboy Club exposé “A Bunny’s Tale” launched her journalism career to new heights. In the 58 years Steinem has lived in her home, it has been the perfect base for her to make and witness history. It was in 1971 that her living room played host to women from media and politics and the conception of Ms. Magazine. Steinem’s home is deeply personal, full of fascinating memorabilia from her tireless career and advocacy–a plush, colorful space, it is easy to feel welcome and instantly at home and Steinem has no plans to stop hosting powerful women living anytime soon.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Women, black people, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, and all the minorities, that all of us must
00:07stand up together and say, no more.
00:12I suspect because I was a 1950s person, I assumed that I would have to get married,
00:18have children, and live a life more influenced by someone else.
00:24And it took me a while to realize that actually we can make our lives in all kinds of different
00:29ways.
00:30What I think of is how important it is for women to be able to have a home without necessarily
00:40also having children, husband, you know, a home of our own.
00:50Home means safety, shelter, friends, sleep.
00:59Home may be, I don't want to say it's more important than love, but it's more permanent.
01:06And I feel that especially now because there are so many people in the world who have no
01:11home.
01:16I had been living in New York even before getting this apartment with my friend Barbara
01:22Nessim, who's an artist, and we were living in a one-room studio.
01:26So to find this that was two big rooms was like heaven.
01:31And in order to have two places to sleep, we built this balcony, which actually is the
01:38front porch of some unknown person in Connecticut and was in a wrecking yard.
01:44So whoever got in first got the balcony, and whoever got in second got the couch in the
01:49other room.
01:51I was just happy to be in Manhattan, happy to be out of Toledo, Ohio.
02:06This floor was the only floor that was open, and it was also very cheap in those days.
02:15Years later, I bought the downstairs and made a staircase.
02:19I always think of anthills.
02:21Have you ever seen a real anthill?
02:23I mean, they're very complicated.
02:26They're like huge apartment buildings, and all the ants have made different spaces.
02:31So I feel that that's what's happened here over the years.
02:40This room has been for a lot of years, I'd have to figure out how many, a meeting place.
02:46And I always thought that we had kind of invented this style of sitting around with
02:5112 to 20 people in a circle.
02:54And once Wilma Mankiller, who was the chief of the Cherokee Nation, was here.
03:00She said, we have a talking stick, which we pass around.
03:03So when you're holding this, you have the right to speak.
03:08So I think in a lot of ways, we're always reinventing something that's universally human.
03:17All these pieces have different memories.
03:21There's a still life on the wall going up those stairs to the balcony that my mother
03:27painted when she was a teenager.
03:29Those are the arms of the Mona Lisa protecting the rainforest.
03:34That is President Obama's inauguration with their two daughters.
03:40This was the Madonna I bought on a trip to Latin America because she was the only Madonna
03:48of color.
03:51My older sister was a gemologist, so I had access to all of these amazing eggs that are
03:57semi-precious stones or enamel or many different things.
04:02This coffee table was a door in India someplace.
04:07It reminds me of India.
04:08I didn't buy it in India, mind you.
04:09I couldn't have brought it back.
04:11But it helps, I think, when each thing has a story.
04:18There actually was a wonderful painting hand-done on the wall by an artist from London.
04:25Then there was a kind of flood that damaged the painting.
04:29So now this is actually wallpaper, but it's the same idea of a vista.
04:35On this floor, where I, with a roommate often, have lived for a very long time, what is now
04:42a kitchenette here was the only kitchen.
04:46When I bought the downstairs, there is now another kitchen.
04:53My ideal of cooking is dialing.
04:56And now even dialing is old-fashioned, so it's phony everywhere.
05:06What is now my bedroom on this parlor floor was the shared workspace with me and Barbara Nessim.
05:13So it's been through many reincarnations.
05:17It's both more bedroom and more living space now.
05:22I remember seeing in London a library ladder, I think in a club or something, and I thought,
05:27oh, how great is that?
05:29And in that room, since the ceilings are so high and the bookcases are so high,
05:35I really could use and did find a library ladder.
05:39So I'm very proud of that.
05:43Those tassels, their origin was women who were working in a factory in Afghanistan,
05:51and their bosses made them cut their hair off because they thought it was a safety hazard
05:56to get their hair caught in the machinery.
06:01They, meanwhile, missed the whole feeling, as we can understand, of having hair that
06:06you could toss back.
06:09And so they created their own kind of headpiece with something they also could toss back.
06:17It makes me think of those women.
06:19And the peacock feather was assembled for me because I'd been living in India, so that's
06:24a kind of magical thing, and peacocks walking around your lawn.
06:32Downstairs is much more meeting and workspace, plus a guest room.
06:41I always wanted to have a space for people who were visiting New York, so it allowed
06:47me to create what is often a guest room downstairs.
06:50Meanwhile, organizers, workers, political people, friends, whoever it is, need to have
06:58So it always seemed right to be able to contribute at least a guest room for one or two people
07:06with its own bath, and that's my contribution.
07:29There was someone I met here on the street, I think, and he was an artist, so I'm not
07:35quite sure how it happened, probably it was his idea, but to have painted bookcases because
07:42it allowed you to memorialize favorite titles, and it also increased and lengthened the vista
07:48of the room.
07:53Women in the mountains and hills of Afghanistan wear these tops with lots of embroidery.
08:01They pass them down from mother to daughter to onward, and every generation adds more
08:07embroidery or more little silver bits added.
08:13And I was, at the time, going around to auctions to try to find cheap things like those two
08:19chests, and when I saw this desk that says on the front, look into thine heart and write,
08:25I mean, how can you resist?
08:26So I had to have it.
08:39The garden, well, ironically, I don't spend much time in the garden.
08:46The trees have meaning.
08:47I mean, I had a friend who's no longer with us, Irene Neves, who was a journalist, and
08:53she adopted my garden.
08:55But just the ability to have an outdoor space seemed important.
09:00That sculpture is beautiful in and of itself, but it's also universal because it, for me,
09:08connects me to Africa, where we all came from in the first place, and means travel, means
09:15creative women.
09:17The Cherokee chief dogwood means a lot to me because it symbolizes Wilma Mankiller.
09:25In my garden, I have a Mary Wollstonecraft plaque, which reminds me that various current
09:34living generations of women who are trying to democratize a patriarchy can identify with
09:43their courage, you know, when they had not even a separate legal identity from daughters
09:50or wives, could not vote.
09:53So it's definitely an inspiration.
09:57Sometimes people think she's buried out there, and I have to explain that's not the case.
10:12It's very comforting to live in rooms that have been lived in by many other people, because
10:17you feel a companionship.
10:31When I was building the staircase from this floor to downstairs, I discovered a penny
10:38from the 1800s that some workman had left in the bricks as a trace.
10:45It is also great to live in the midst of stories you gradually discover.
10:55Where we live, if we're lucky not to be displaced by war or poverty, the places we live are
11:01like bird's nests.
11:03You know, we have carefully chosen each little twig and brought it home to weave it into
11:09our nest.