Recently married, she and her husband plan to stay at the Green Shutter for awhile, use it to build good credit and eventually buy a house. It’s some kind of halfway,” Leaette said. “For everybody, it’s some kind of steppingstone.
#EVERYONE HAS A STORY HOTEL WINDOWS#
The 21/2-bedroom apartment has a kitchen, two large windows that overlook B Street and a small yard where potted plants line a brick wall and a grill is set up. That was typically noisy from the street traffic, and they waited for one of the building’s four apartments to open up, where they have been living for about three months. They started off at the Green Shutter about a year ago in a room at the back of the building, and after a week moved into the room above the Bistro. The son has been sleeping on a makeshift rollout mattress on the floor, and the family is hoping to move into the bigger apartment across the courtyard, which includes a shower.Īt the end of another hallway live Mike and Leaette Sullivan. “This place has blessed and helped us out a lot,” she said.Īll the family’s toiletries are stacked around the room’s sink and mirror. Fernorma said faith is what keeps the family going as she shows her family tree, written on the inside cover. The three of them share one room, neatly made up with an old TV, on top of which sits a thick white Bible from 1927 with gold lettering on the cover and spine. The Jacksons live on the “family side” of the hotel, where there are more parents and children. Meanwhile, Fernorma, who worked as a caretaker, is looking after her husband. As is often the case, living with family members became too much, so they needed another option.Īndrew used to be a cook and butcher at Safeway, but a back injury put him out of work and on disability. They have been at the Green Shutter about five months, since they became homeless after their adult son was shot and killed in Stockton and the funeral costs became overwhelming. “They treat me fine, like a king,” Gentry says of his neighbors at the Green Shutter.Īround the corner from Gentry live Andrew and Fernorma Jackson and their 15-year-old son. His favorites have the faces of dark tree trunk cross-sections. He has at least 200 clocks, and they chime the hours every couple of minutes. But the first thing one notices in Gentry’s apartment is the clocks set at all different times, from floor to ceiling. Now his apartment has air conditioning and a computer with an Internet connection that he uses to e-mail his brother in Arizona. “I have good stories from the old days,” winks the lifelong bachelor without expanding. The maids’ living quarters were what is now Gentry’s bedroom, living room and kitchen. When Gentry moved in during the 1960s, the hotel was used mainly by business travelers, and there were three maids who changed the beds daily. Remnants of the building’s blacksmith past can still be seen in one of its entrances that was once an alleyway between two buildings. Some 40 years later, the Eggert brothers, native Hayward sons who had dental offices in Hayward, Oakland and San Francisco, built onto the initial building’s brick walls and opened the Green Shutter Hotel in 1926 with 55 guest rooms and 13 stores below.
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The Green Shutter Hotel evolved out of a blacksmith and wheelwright shop that had served Hayward in its early farming days since 1878. He first stayed at the hotel in 1964, when he was hired by the original builder as a manager. Tucked away off this courtyard is the apartment of Jack Gentry, the hotel’s longest resident. Among the green walls and stained glass windows is a courtyard built on the roof of the first story where many residents hang out to smoke, catch up and watch each other’s kids play.
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![everyone has a story hotel everyone has a story hotel](https://images.milledcdn.com/2020-10-24/s3rihJffccRG0gqP/-SB4jr-WJQYe.jpeg)
The hotel’s 80 units spread over the second floor of the Green Shutter building at the corner of B and Main streets, in the heart of downtown Hayward.Īrched doorways divide its many sections, as exposed pipes run along the ceiling. While Rodrigues is one of the hotel’s shorter-stay guests, others have made it their permanent home. Everyone has a story at the Green Shutter – East Bay Times Close Menu