Trowmart Inn ca. 1906

While the Martha Washington Hotel established a model for housing business women, a 1907 housing exposé titled: “The Problem of Living for 97,000 Girls,” emphasized the “Absurd Restrictions and Poor Housing Conditions” working-class women continued to suffer. The article mentions one innovative solution, however: the Trowmart Inn. Completed in 1906, the Trowmart picked up on the ideas put into practice at the Martha Washington and, for the first time, provided accommodation for the working-class girl without the strict rules of a “Moral Home.” Like its inspiration, the Trowmart highlighted this fact in its promotional brochures. Compared to the Martha Washington, the inn’s interior spaces and furnishings were plain and even utilitarian, but the Trowmart provided similar amenities: a dining room and cafeteria, “beau parlors” (small parlors where the residents could entertain their gentlemen friends), a large parlor with a piano, a library, and doctor’s office. In addition, the Trowmart provided a sewing room, full laundry, and a drying room, essential spaces for the shop, millinery, and factory girls for whom the Inn was planned. Living expenses ran to $4.50 to $5 per work week, with breakfast and dinner included.

The Trowmart Inn was an immediate success: a 1908 newspaper article reported the hotel, which housed 250 women, had been full since its 1906 opening. The Trowmart was the exception however. The majority of women’s hotels constructed during the first few decades of the 20th century were for professional women.