Mazie Gordon-Phillips (10 March 1896 – 8 June 1964) also known as "Queen of

The Bowery The Bowery () is a street and neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in New York City, New York. The street runs from Chatham Square at Park Row, Worth Street, and Mott Street in the south to Cooper Square at 4th Street in the north.Jackson, Kenn ...

" and "Saint Mazie", was a movie theater owner and advocate for people experiencing homelessness on the

Bowery The Bowery () is a street and neighbourhood, neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in New York City, New York. The street runs from Chatham Square at Park Row (Manhattan), Park Row, Worth Street, and Mott Street in the south to Cooper Square at 4th ...

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

Biography

Gordon-Phillips grew up in

Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...

and moved to New York City at the age of 10 to live with her sister Rosie. Gordon-Phillips and her sisters Rosie and Jeanie owned the Venice Theater on Park Row from the 1920s to the 1940s; Gordon-Phillips was the manager. After the theater closed each night, she visited homeless men on the streets, distributing money and toiletries and assisting them to find a place to sleep in homeless shelters. In 1940, a ''New Yorker'' journalist Joseph Mitchell wrote a profile of Gordon-Phillips and coined the name "Saint Mazie".

References

1896 births 1964 deaths 20th-century American businesswomen 20th-century American businesspeople {{US-business-bio-1890s-stub