Mazie Gordon-Phillips (10 March 1896 – 8 June 1964) also known as "Queen of The Bowery" and "Saint Mazie", was a movie theater owner and advocate for people experiencing homelessness on the

Bowery The Bowery () is a street and neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in New York City. 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, Kenneth L. ...

, New York City.

Biography

Gordon-Phillips grew up in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

, Massachusetts, 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

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gordon-Phillips, Mazie 1896 births 1964 deaths 20th-century American businesswomen 20th-century American businesspeople