Alice Mason (October 26, 1923 – January 4, 2024) was an American real estate broker, socialite, and political fundraiser.
According to the New York Times she became one of the most powerful real estate brokers in Manhattan and was known as "the person you called if you couldn’t get past the [co-op] board."
In 1999, a book by Lawrence Otis Graham, Our Kind of People: Inside America’s Black Upper Class, outed her as passing for white.
[2][3][5] Mason's mother encouraged her to pass for white to gain access to opportunities that weren't open to Black women.
[2][1] Mason became interested in real estate in 1952 after Gladys Mills of Gotham Realty helped her find an apartment, a studio on Manhattan's East 53rd.
[2] Mason became friends with Jeanne Murray Vanderbilt and her husband, Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt Jr., and learned that as members of the nouveau riche and not listed in the New York Social Register, the couple were blackballed by Manhattan's most exclusive and sought-after upscale co-op buildings, which were controlled by so-called WASPs, white Anglo-Saxon Protestants.
[10] Mason moved into a large rent-stabilized apartment on East 72nd in 1962, and she began giving dinner parties, which were prominent social events.
[2] Her guest lists included Kitty D’Alessio, Richard Butler, Helen Gurley Brown, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Richard Cohen, Walter Cronkite, Jaime de Pinies, Carmen Dell’Orefice, Dominick Dunne, Alia El Solh, Joni Evans, Alan Greenspan, Henry Anatole Grunwald, William Randolph Hearst Jr., Arianna Huffington,Marion Javits, Philip Johnson, Estée Lauder, Norman Mailer, Aileen Mehle, Mary Tyler Moore, Diane Sawyer, Lynn Sherr, William Styron, Kenneth Taylor, Blaine Trump, Gloria Vanderbilt, Elizabeth Vargas, Claus von Bulow, Barbara Walters and other prominent actors, business people, artists and writers, publishers and journalists, diplomats, and socialites.
[1] She generally held a party close to Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Valentine's Day, and timed the others to celebrate a guest of honor, including Alexander Haig.
[2] According to the New York Times, Mason became one of the most powerful real estate brokers in the city and was known as "the person you called if you couldn’t get past the board".
[2] According to the New York Social Diary, her brokering work "eventually changed the rules in high-end Manhattan co-ops, forever.
[9] She was profiled in Steven Gaines' 2005 book about the history of Manhattan's upscale real estate market, The Sky's The Limit.