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Helen’s Gershwin
Helen Palladino is thrilled to be living alone in Midtown Manhattan
By Judith Stiles
The cheerful photos of friends and family make a fence of wall-to-wall faces, a silent ring of people that encircle Helen Palladino as she sits in her sunny apartment in a swanky Manhattan high-rise called The Gershwin. After many decades, four children, and nine grandchildren, Helen is delighted to be living alone. The pictures give her a sense of being surrounded by loved ones, but without the daily mayhem. Now only Helen chooses when the radio and TV will start chattering.
The Gershwin, 150 West 50th Street, is an “80-20 high-rise” where developers Jack Resnick & Sons allocated 20 percent of their 550 luxury apartments to low-income seniors in exchange for a handsome tax abatement when the building opened in 1998. To qualify, Helen endured three interviews and what seemed like endless paperwork as did 4,000 other applicants who could prove an income under $22,000 per year.
“They didn’t want somebody who was trampy, they wanted someone with style,” she recounts. “It was a cattle call, but I approached it like any other audition. Because I have been an actress for so many years, I knew exactly what they were looking for.”
Helen made the cut and snagged a one-bedroom apartment on the eighth floor. She remembers a somewhat awkward selection process where all of the “winners” nervously watched as their names were drawn out of a fishbowl. One by one, each was assigned a unit – a home – that would be guaranteed for the rest of his or her life. Comparable apartments rent for $2,500 to $3,500 on the open market, but these lucky tenants pay $400 to $700 a month to reside in a building that sports a salmon-colored marble lobby replete with doorman and fresh flowers galore.
Helen gestures out her window to St. Malachy’s Church across the street, the hotspot 1940s chapel where Douglas Fairbanks and Joan Crawford were married, and Spencer Tracy could be found lighting candles on a film’s opening night. The movie stars are long gone, but neighborhood actors, mostly senior citizens, frequent the basement of St. Malachy’s, which is now called Encore Community Services. Here they can enjoy a tasty meal for one dollar and good company for the afternoon. When Helen doesn’t have the energy to travel uptown to Fairway (which offers better bargains on groceries than the local Food Emporium), she dines at Encore, where she prefers to sit not with veteran actors, who tend to be a bit cliqueish and snobby, but with newcomers eager to hear the lowdown on various services that Encore provides: legal advice, health and nutrition programs – salsa and tap classes. Helen feels especially knowledgeable when the topic turns to senior housing, and is often delighted to dish out the whole scoop.
It was more than a decade ago that Sister Lillian McNamara of Encore first met Helen and steered her through the maze of affordable housing options in New York City. Helen Palladino arrived in Manhattan after 45 years of marriage, having finally succumbed to an overwhelming urge to dump her husband and five-bedroom house in Jackson Heights and pursue her acting career full-time. “I was scared,” she confesses, biting her lower lip. “But I just got up off the couch, put one foot in front of the other, grabbed my bag and a few hundred dollars, and walked out the door.”
With a meager Social Security check, no pension, and sporadic acting work, Helen found herself saddled with a new identity: Single white female looking for a roommate. Her first stop was to crash with a close friend who provided a lot of tissues, spun her around a few times, and pointed her toward Encore. Helen was drawn to the organization not just by the movie star folklore, but also because of the savvy nuns who run the place. They gave her a tip on the Aurora Residence at 475 West 57th Street, where the owners were accepting rental applications.
Sister Lillian explained that in the late 1980s the Aurora was in the process of being renovated into luxury apartments when, poof, the real estate market crashed. The A999*tors’ Fund stepped in and, through a complex arrangement of funding and tax credits, took over the building. One hundred and seventy-eight residential units were created in the beautiful 30-story high rise. The apartments would be available to special low-income groups including seniors, working professionals (mostly in theater arts), and individuals with AIDS.
The $26,400 income cap was not a problem for Helen, who did stints on shows like Law & Order, and sporadically found other work. She added up her income from Social Security and acting jobs, and was elated to discover that she qualified for this luxury high-rise with spectacular views, parquet floors, on-site medical services, and even a social worker for the tenants. There was one catch: Helen had to find a roommate: Residents were required to share their apartments.
Rents at the Aurora ranged from $377 to $700 a month. Helen made a list of her friends and eventually called Kitty, who had coincidentally just bolted from her husband in New Jersey. The two senior sirens gussied up for the interview, made a dramatic presentation, and passed with rave reviews. Within days they were basking in their new two-bedroom apartment on the 24th floor, gleefully combing the Backstage listings in search of acting jobs.
Within a month of sharing the apartment, Helen discovered that Kitty liked to go to bed early while she herself was a night owl. Helen loved to entertain, while Kitty had a leather-covered mahogany coffee table that wouldn’t survive the contact of a single glass. “Kitty seemed upset all the time, and then one day she walked through a glass door in the lobby and was badly injured,” says Helen. Within a week, Kitty’s son picked up all her belongings, including a stained mahogany coffee table, and that was the last Helen heard of Kitty.
“I went straight from my father’s house to my husband’s house to an apartment with Kitty,” Helen says wistfully, adding that Kitty was not to blame for the “break-up.” Without a roommate, Helen knew that she would have to leave the Aurora. Fortunately, Helen Palladino is a survivor. When relations with Kitty started to deteriorate, she went back to Sister Lillian, who gave her the tip about the Gershwin. Helen applied in secret, and when the time came to move out of the Aurora, her new place at the Gershwin was already lined up.
“The only way I’ll ever move again is if I’m carried out feet-first,” says Helen, overjoyed as she bustles around the kitchen, grateful that she no longer has to worry about making a mess.
Helen plans to roast a chicken later this evening, and invite a friend over to share it; maybe Mark, a fellow actor, so they can compare notes on Sweet Charity. She will take an hour to visit her older sister Maddy, who has been stuck in a nursing home ever since she bent down at her doorstep to pick up the newspaper and broke her hip.
Maddy used to say that when an older woman stops talking and her face settles into stillness, she reveals her true self – perhaps in angry eyebrows, pursed lips, or sadness around the eyes. When Helen finally slows down, her eyes become wide with astonishment. Maybe she is amazed at her good luck to be living in the Gershwin and not some ramshackle SRO. Perhaps simple things have become astonishing too – that she is alive and mobile and living in the heart of Manhattan, where she can still cook a delicious meal for a friend.
