4 hours ago
1
Maria Silva is used to being the only woman in the building — she’s been a “doorwoman” in New York City for more than two decades.
Indeed, her position is supremely rare in the Big Apple, which has long had residential buildings staffed by doormen.
As that name implies, the position is most commonly held by men, whose crucial duties run the gamut from safeguarding parcels, vetting guests and responding to the occasional headache — lockouts, broken elevators and the like. They also form a strong part of any building’s community.
However, women make up just 3% of this iconic New York City job, according to union demographics, making doorwomen more rare than female taxi drivers, at 6%, or female MTA employees, at 13%.
This small cohort, sources told The Post, has to work extra hard to get their foot in the door — and work extra hard to keep it there.
“There are times that you will get a guest coming in requesting to see an apartment or the leasing office, and they’re like, ‘Oh, wow, there’s a woman here,’” Silva said. “Once in a while you get those. It doesn’t bother me, though.”
Despite being the odd man — or woman — out, there is nothing else Silva would rather do. The 53-year-old grandmother claims to know each resident in her 250-unit rental building in Brooklyn, where she is the only female employee out of 10. She’s worked at the building, under the “Lead Concierge” title, for nine years this summer.
“I know everyone,” Silva said. “Their friends, their parents, cousins, everything. Dogs, too.”
Silva joked that she sometimes feels more like a therapist or a bartender than a doorwoman, she gets to know the residents that well.
“Sometimes I’m the first one to learn when one of the girls are pregnant, or they’ll invite me to their weddings,” Silva said. “Those are special moments.”
Silva has received two wedding invites so far this year, and the kids’ birthday invites are a near constant. She said the five or six pregnancies in her building each year are always cause of celebration, too.
One of her residents recently shared the happy news with her — but secretly, Silva already knew.
“As soon as I saw that little bump!” she said. “It’s so sweet, they come in and show me the sonograms, we talk about if it’s a girl or a boy.”
It’s difficult to land a union-wage doorman gig in the Big Apple. Job vacancies are rare and it’s widely reported that you have to know a guy — who knows a guy — to find one. If this industry is notoriously hard to break into for your average Joe, it’s even harder for your average Jane.
“It’s not easy for a female to get the job,” Silva said. “It is a male-dominated field, and to be a female in the position, you have to have thick skin.”
Silva said she’s been asked by hiring managers about her ability to show up for work on time as a mother, or later, whether she’d take extra sick days as a grandmother.
“I believe that’s the reason why they don’t like to hire women. They’d rather hire a man, because they are more respected than women in that sense,” Silva said.
Like Silva, Yaphia Pabon believes that being a woman makes her an even better doorman, though she prefers “door lady.”
Pabon got her gig on the Upper East Side eight years ago. She recalled walking through the city with her friends and saying something along the lines of, “Wow, I would love to see a door lady.”
“My girlfriend was like, ‘You should look into that’,” Pabon said.
Pabon was working in payables and receivables at a hospital at the time; staring at a screen all day hurt her eyes. The active and social demands of this new profession suited her much better.
Eight years later, Pabon is occasionally relied upon by her female residents to zip up dresses and cast the deciding vote on which shoes to wear for a night out at the ballet. It’s a special level of trust she gets as the only woman working at the door of her 30-unit condo building. She also serves as her building’s porter some days. That role is far more athletic than that of a doorman — mopping the floors, taking out the garbage at night, wiping the windows to name some necessary tasks.
Pabon said that while she has felt unfairly singled out by past male colleagues, the hardest part of the job is, in fact, the heavy lifting. New Yorkers create a lot of garbage, and she’s always hauling it outside.
“People will walk by and say, ‘woman power,'” Pabon said, laughing.
She was on porter duty recently when the 5-year-old daughter of a family that moved out recognized Pabon across the street.
“I was outside doing my job, and I saw her tugging on her nanny, saying she wanted to go across the street,” Pabon said. “When they came up, she hugged me so much. She was like ‘I miss you so much. There’s no door ladies at my new building!’”
The New York City doorman is a true institution of the city. The stereotypical capped, coated, silver-haired and white-gloved doorman represents a stalwart barrier from the chaotic city streets, a discrete confidant, a watchful friend.
The doorman profession is far older than New York City, however. Ancient Roman doormen, called “ianitors,” inspired an Ovid poem about a locked-out lover begging an unyielding ianitor for entry.
Andrew Alpern, an architect and architecture historian, described the modern profession as one in evolution — from spending all day hailing taxi cabs in the pre-smartphone era to now navigating hoards of Amazon packages. The demographics of the profession have also evolved.
“When I was a child, doormen were almost always Irish. They were the largest immigrant group when I was growing up in the 1940s. Today, of course, other immigrant groups have come in,” Alpern said. “And, if I’m to believe [reports], women have become doormen.”
Sharon Noel Lake ticks both boxes — the mother of two immigrated from Trinidad in the late ’90s and, even after 20 years in the business, remains the only woman working in her ultra-luxury condo building on Billionaires’ Row.
Although Lake demurred from naming her workplace — its near-celebrity status in the world of New York real estate — she called it “luxury of luxury.” Discretion, Lake said, is the key to her job.
“We are like the gate keepers, and there is a lot that goes on,” she said. “But at the end of the day this is their home. I treat it very private, like if it was my home.”
While her official title is that of concierge, Lake said she wears multiple hats on any given day — runner, greeter or doorman. She is also her building’s shop steward for 32BJ SEIU, which represents workers in the building services industry across several states.
“A lot of people ask me, why I don’t go for property manager, why I don’t go for something else?” she said. “Because I love what I do, and I think if I leave, I wouldn’t be able to help my colleagues the way I do.”
The 32BJ SEIU union represents 28,000 doormen in New York City, the union told The Post, including 800 women.
Silva, Pabon and Lake all said that women in this line of work have to look out for themselves.
“I just learned that I had to stand on my 10 toes,” Pabon said. “And say my opinions a lot.”
She described a previous boss frequently singling her out for critique, or male colleagues poking fun at her for reorganizing delivery boxes after they stacked them poorly.
“They always say, ‘Oh, she’s giving it the female touch,'” she said.
Beyond the typical ribbing, Pabon acknowledged that she has to keep her wits about her to stay safe outside during her late night porter duties. But, she said, the night shift looks out for each other.
Lake, the only woman on her crew of more than 30 employees, runs a tight ship, but said she had to earn the respect she now commands.
“Being a woman in this position, it is hard,” Lake said. “I had my ups and downs, and I had to work hard for my respect. I always use the phrase, ‘Don’t let the tone of this voice fool you.'”
For Silva, though, the relationships she gets to have with residents make up for it all.
Her favorite shift will always be the 3:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. slot, she said, because she gets to see all the kids she has come to know so well come home from school.
Silva recently received a wedding invitation from a resident she’s known for eight years. She won’t attend — she doesn’t like to mix her work with her personal life — but she’ll always accept a slice of birthday cake when it’s brought down to her desk.
The Christmas tips don’t hurt, either.
“The main reason why I’m still there, it’s because there’s love from the residents,” Silva said. “It makes it feel like home.”
English (US)