Inside Gloria Steinem’s History-Filled New York Home

[tape clicking]

Women, Black people, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans,

and all the minorities,

that all of us must stand up together and say, No more.

[crowd cheering]

I suspect because I was a 1950s person,

I assumed that I would have to get married,

have children and live a life

more influenced by someone else.

And it took me a while to realize

that actually we can make our lives

in all kinds of different ways.

What I think of is how important it is for women

to be able to have a home

without necessarily also having children, husband,

you know, a home of our own. [uplifting upbeat music]

Home means safety, shelter, friends,

sleep. [chuckling]

Home, maybe,

I don't wanna say it's more important than love,

but it's more permanent.

And I feel that, especially now,

because there are so many people in the world

who have no home.

I had been living in New York

and even before getting this apartment

with my friend Barbara Nessim, who's an artist,

and we were living in a one room studio.

So to find this, that was two big rooms, was like heaven.

And in order to have two places to sleep,

we built this balcony, which actually is the front porch

of some unknown person in Connecticut

and was in a wrecking yard.

So whoever got in first, got the balcony,

and whoever got in second, got the couch in the other room.

I was just happy to be in Manhattan,

happy to be out of Toledo, Ohio.

[gentle music]

This floor was the only floor that was open

and it was also very cheap in those days.

Years later, I bought the downstairs and made a staircase.

But I always think of anthills.

Have you ever seen a real anthill?

I mean, they're very complicated.

They're like huge apartment buildings

and all the ants have made different spaces.

So I feel that's what's happened here over the years.

This room has been, for a lot of years,

I'd have to figure out how many,

a meeting place,

and I always thought that we had kind of invented

this style of sitting around

with 12 to 20 people in a circle.

And once Wilma Mankiller,

who was the chief of the Cherokee nation,

was here, she said, we have a talking stick,

which we pass around.

So when you're holding this, you have the right to speak.

So I think in a lot of ways,

we're always reinventing something

that's universally human.

All these pieces have different memories.

There's a still life on the wall

going up those stairs to the balcony

that my mother painted when she was a teenager.

Those are the arms of the Mona Lisa

protecting the rainforest.

That is the Obama's, President Obama's,

inauguration with their two daughters.

And this was the Madonna I bought on a trip

to Latin America because she was the only Madonna of color.

My older sister was a gemologist,

so I had access to all of these amazing eggs

that are semi-precious stones

or enamel or many different things.

This coffee table was a door in India someplace.

I didn't buy it in India, mind you,

I couldn't have brought it back.

But it helps, I think, when each thing has a story.

There actually was a wonderful painting hand done

on the wall by an artist from London.

Then there was a kind of flood that damaged the painting.

So now this is actually wallpaper,

but it's the same idea of a vista.

On this floor where I, with a roommate often,

have lived for a very long time,

what is now a kitchenette, here, was the only kitchen.

When I bought the downstairs,

there is now another kitchen.

My ideal of cooking is dialing,

well, and now even dialing is old fashioned.

So it's phoning.

[gentle music continues]

What is now my bedroom on this parlor floor

was the shared workspace with me and Barbara Nessim.

So it's been through many reincarnations.

It's both more bedroom and more living space now.

I remember seeing in London a library ladder,

I think in a club or something,

and I thought, Oh, how great is that?

And in that room,

since the ceilings are so high

and the bookcases are so high,

I really could use and did find a library ladder.

So I'm very proud of that.

Those tassels, their origin was women

who were working in a factory in Afghanistan

and their bosses made them cut their hair off

because they thought it was a safety hazard

to get their hair, you know, caught in the machinery.

They, meanwhile, missed the whole feeling

as we can understand,

of having hair that you could toss back

and so they created their own kind of headpiece

with something they also could toss back.

It makes me think of those women.

And the peacock feather was assembled for me

because I'd been living in India,

so that's a kind of magical thing,

and peacock's walking around your lawn.

[gentle music continues]

Downstairs is much more meeting and workspace,

plus a guest room.

I always wanted to have a space for people

who were visiting New York,

so it allowed me to create

what is often a guest room downstairs.

Meanwhile, organizers, workers, political people, friends,

whoever it is, need to pass through New York,

so it always seemed right to be able

to contribute at least a guest room

for one or two people with its own bath

and that's my contribution.

[gentle piano music]

There was someone I met here on the street, I think,

and he was an artist, so I'm not quite sure how it happened,

probably it was his idea, but to have painted bookcases

because it allowed you to memorialize favorite titles

and it also increased and lengthened the vista of the room.

And women in the mountains and hills of Afghanistan

wear these tops with lots of embroidery.

They pass them down from mother to daughter to onward

and every generation adds more embroidery

or more little silver bits added

and I was, at the time, going around to auctions

to try to find cheap things like those two chest

and when I saw this desk that says on the front,

Look into thine heart and write,

I mean, how can you resist?

So I had to have it.

[gentle music]

The garden, well, ironically,

I don't spend much time in the garden.

The trees have meaning.

I mean, I had a friend who's no longer with us,

Irene Nav, who was a journalist, and she adopted my garden.

But just the ability to have an outdoor space

seemed important.

That sculpture is beautiful in and of itself,

but it's also universal because it,

for me, connects me to Africa

where we all came from in the first place

and means travel, means creative women.

The Cherokee Chief Dogwood means a lot to me

because it symbolizes Wilma Mankiller.

In my garden, I have a Mary Wollstonecraft plaque,

which reminds me that various current

living generations of women

who are trying to democratize a patriarchy

can identify with their courage.

You know, when they had not even a separate legal identity

daughters or wives could not vote,

so it's definitely an inspiration.

Sometimes people think she's buried out there

and I have to explain that's not the case.

[gentle piano music]

It's very comforting to live in rooms

that have been lived in by many other people

'cause you feel a companionship.

When I was building the staircase

from this floor to downstairs,

I discovered a penny from the 1800s

that some workmen had left in the bricks as a trace.

It is also great to live in the midst of stories

you gradually discover.

Where we live, if we're lucky,

not to be displaced by war or poverty,

the places we live are like bird's nests,

you know, we have carefully chosen each little twig

and brought it home to weave it into our nest.

[gentle music continues]