LIKE BAZAARS

Evening Star, Issue 19760, 10 January 1928, Page 7

LIKE BAZAARS

OFFICE BUILDINGS OF NEW YORK. The office buildings of Now York are fast becoming great bazaars (says the ‘New York Times’l. Not only is this true on the ground floor, where shops of every known variety open on to the entrance hall, but it is also true on upper floors, where the rooms are offices, not shops. One may have almost anything one wants in a New York office building—and delivered right at his desk as well. At a telephone summons a barber will come in to administer a shave, a soda clerk will deliver refreshments, a waiter will bring a meal, a cobbler will collect shoes to be repaired and returned in half an hour. Certain bootblacks work given buildings regularly, poking their heads in door after door, offering a shine. In their wako came pedlars. They bring in almost everything the office worker needs, and a great deal besides. An old woman tries to make an honest living selling magazines. She takes to an office bunding route and peddles them from door to door. Among the young men she does little business with her literature on rearing children, but one of them afterwards relents and sympathetically sends an office boy after her to buy a few copies. Thereafter she becomes a permanent fixture of the building. Another woman works up a candy route. With her little hand satchel and her friendly smile she gets past the guardian at the door and cheerily inquires at ctfch desk inside: “Any candy to-day? I have chocolate, coconut, maple w'alnut, and fudge.” In like manner youths go the office rounds bent on fitting out the force with socks and ties. The office building pedlar is generally of a humble type, but well versed, lor all that, in his or her selling talk, and as persevering as if sales involved 1 arge amount*, *>