* 5

What if she had given in to Ivy’s persistent requests and had allowed her to walk home alone like Bettina Carew and some of the others in her class?
“Why’ve we stopped, Mommy?”
Janice took a deep breath to regain control of herself, smiled wanly, and together, they crossed the street and entered the old building, Des Artistes.
The Fortress, Bill called it.

Built at the turn of the century at the whim of a group of painters and sculptors who purchased the land, hired an architectural firm, approved of the plans, and arranged for the mortgage, each level of the twenty-story building contained six master apartments of various sizes, featuring huge, high-ceilinged studios with galleries facing large floor-to-ceiling windows that offered a diversified selection of city views. A number of these windows admitted the northern light, a must for the painters. The décor of the apartment was lavish, imaginative, and fulfilled the esthetical and emotional needs of their owners. Some studios took on a baroque character, displaying vaulted ceilings replete with inset pediments and slavering gargoyles. Others went a more frivolous rococo route, featuring painted ceilings with rich, gilded mouldings. A few apartments followed a sombre Tudor pattern and were intricately panelled in darkly stained veneers.
A magnificent restaurant in the lobby of the building amply satisfied the artists’ appetites and even delivered exquisitely prepared dinners to each apartment via a network of dumbwaiters scattered throughout the building. During the Depression, Des Artistes was sold to a cooperative association, and the new people who purchased apartments began to remodel them. The space in midair was valuable to them and was quickly subdivided, providing a large living room downstairs and