During the Great Depression, the Boston Women’s Trade Union League maintained offices and a soup kitchen in this building owned and occupied on the upper floors by Boston’s exclusive Tavern Club for men. Soon after the National WTUL was established at Faneuil Hall in 1903, the Boston branch assisted women workers in forming trade unions and aiding strikes, including the telephone operators’ strike of 1919. Although upper middle class women reformers began the BWTUL, women workers joined and held major offices. Among the presidents were telephone operators Julia O’Connor [Parker] (1890-1972) and Rose Finkelstein Norwood (1890-1980). For fifty years they also helped organize Boston library workers, retail clerks, and office cleaners.
