Legendary agent Alice F. Mason told The Real Deal in 2010 that her success in real estate was due to the fact that pre-war buildings allowed people to live together in many silos. He said he changed New York.
“When I started, there were four managing agents and they only employed social registrars, because they were primarily working in all the pre-war buildings, which were mainly WASP-style buildings.” she told TRD at closing. “When she had Alfred Vanderbilt as a client, she called a lot of buildings and they said, ‘We’ll never hire Vanderbilt or Astor. They’re his 1880s. We are his 1620s.”
“I sold him a penthouse apartment at 31 East 79th Street. I knew a lot of different kinds of people and decided they should all be able to live in the same building. We invited different people into each building.”
Mason may have been motivated by his black heritage, a secret he kept for nearly 50 years, even from close friends such as Henry Kissinger, Barbara Walters, Mike Wallace, and Gloria Vanderbilt. Air Mail reported.
The details are contained in her unpublished 334-page memoir, which begins with her birth in Philadelphia in 1923 into a “colored bourgeois family.”
Mason, who is light-skinned and whose maiden name was Christmas at birth, was able to remain white when she moved to New York in 1952, a time when racial prejudice remained strong.
“My family was so fair-skinned that they called me ‘White Christmas,'” she wrote, according to the paper.
She made the choice to keep her secret during a period of exclusion when racial differences were important to professional success.
“I had an irrepressible joie de vivre, a contagious cheerful enthusiasm, and an innate irreverence,” she wrote, according to the newspaper. They loved laughing and talking with me when I added fun to their lives. ”
She found an apartment for Marilyn Monroe, which honed Mason’s integrity.
She played a pivotal role in supporting Jimmy Carter’s political campaign, raising large sums of money for his presidential campaign. She also highlights her eccentric side, relying on her astrology, psychology and sociology background to make important decisions.
“Jimmy Carter was the first politician I ever met. I was sitting next to him at the ’21’ dinner and he asked if I supported him. I said, “I’m an astrologer, so I’ll look at your chart and consider supporting you if you have the energy.” He had so much energy on the charts,” she told TRD, referring to the famous dinners she once hosted for the rich and powerful. “When Carter was president, a lot of people from Washington came to dinner, including the director of the CIA. [also] There was Peter Jennings, Barbara Walters, Tom Brokaw. ”
Profiled in Lawrence Otis Graham’s 1999 book Our People: Inside America’s Black Upper Class, the news caused little ripples and Mason went on to a successful career in real estate. Ta.
Mason, who is 100 years old and still lives in a rent-controlled building in New York, shared his secret with model Carmen Delloreficelle.
“I always take my hat off to Alice,” Delorefiche told Airmail. “She worked hard and overcame all her prejudices.”
— Ted Glanser