Through the Looking Glass

To most of its devotees, the Window Shop is merely a quaint combination of foreign gift center and Viennese restaurant. But to the waitresses who work there, the shop is an open window to a new life in a new country. For the pat fifteen years, this store has welcomed refugees, offering a home during the difficult period of adjustment. It was with this idea that a group of faculty wives started the store in 1939. Their main concern was in helping refugee students and their wives to pay for an education, but after the first few years, the shop encompassed non-students as well.

Since its inception, the Window Shop has continued to welcome these displaced persons, many of whom began work unable to speak English. Channeled in by church groups and welfare agencies, immigrants spent in this store the years needed to gain citizenship. Here, a combination of German and English helped case them into the American culture. Transforming lawyer to chef, college student to salesgirl, for some the shop was merely an orientation center; but many have remained there permanently.

As the ranks of newcomers grew, the Window Shop expanded proportionately. Started in a tiny room on Church Street, it was a women's exchange where refugee wives could sell embroidery, lacework, or pastry. Its only distinguishing feature was the large window after which the shop was named. A modest success, the store soon moved to larger quarters, finally settling on Brattle Street in the Blacksmith's Shop immortalized by Long fellow. Now employing over sixty workers, the Window Shop has seven small dining rooms, a gift and dress store, and a bakery.

With this varied appeal, the shop does make profits. These, however, go into an employee assistance fund for emergency need or scholarships. The fund was started during the war when a Cambridge housewife gave the Window Shop some blocked linen to sell, asking that the profits be used for vocational training. Since then the fund has grown and now supports twenty small scholarships for employees' children. It also offers employees emergency aid.

But more important than financial security, the Window Shop offers the immigrant a welcome and a home. While the McCarran Act has minimized this function recently, the few newcomers receive the same companionship and help that characterized the war years. Representing eight nationalities, understanding and mutual problems have made the Window Shop not just a vocation, but a new life.