When Park Avenue doorman Stephen Bruno sorts through the building mail and sees an envelope with sexually suggestive images, he and his colleagues immediately know who it’s for.
“We don’t have to look at the name, because we know whose it is,” he told The Post of a certain resident who also had a habit of suggestively eating pawpaw fruit in the lobby.
In his new book, “Building Material: The Memoir of a Park Avenue Doorman,” Bruno dishes on the two decades he’s spent working for New York’s one-percenters and the intimate glimpses into their lives he’s gotten.
“They’re often stressed out and spaced out. They’re somewhere else,” Bruno told The Post. “They say hello, they’re still courteous, but you can tell that something is weighing heavy on them, and it’s often business. A lot of them are in finance.”
Raised in the Bronx, Bruno was 22 when he was hired as a summer relief doorman at a building on Park Avenue. Now 42, he’s still working as an Upper East Side doorman and has spent the last 14 years in the same building.
During one of his first overnight shifts at a tony co-op, he was reading a newspaper when he heard the “ping” of the elevator, and watched as a tall man in a long bathrobe emerged.
The bathrobe was untied, revealing a “very orange” inner thigh. The man then began to awkwardly stretch in front of Bruno before commenting that had he known how handsome the doorman was, he would have come downstairs sooner.
“He liked what he liked, and he figured you’d play along,” said Bruno. “He was a strange man,”
Over the years, he’s been privy to the romantic inclinations of various residents from hot dates to late-night rendezvous.
He knew when two residents became involved with each other when he’d see them taking the elevator between floors in the wee hours of the morning on his overnight shifts.
Another resident had a girlfriend that would come around during the day, but at night he’d entertain gentlemen.
“Guys would come by at two or three in the morning. He’d call downstairs and say, ‘so-and-so’s coming for a nightcap,’ and he’d always have to say the name because it was always a different name,” Bruno recalled.
Then there was the woman who spent all of her time fretting about ghosts.
“There’s very little furniture in her apartment, just a candle in the middle of the living room,” Bruno said. “She used to call down about seeing ghosts. One time she crossed the street and just turned around and stared at the building for half an hour.”
Some residents revealed themselves to be stingy and even downright mean.
During the holidays, he was once tipped a mere candy bar by someone who regularly called on him for extra help.
Then there was a woman who hated him from the jump, never forgiving him for replacing a doorman she was fond of.
“That lady routinely crossed boundaries,” Bruno said. “One time another doorman was mopping the floor, and she comes and steps through the area he’s mopping, even though there’s space on both sides. We looked at her surprised, because it was obviously rude, and she goes, ‘oh, sorry. I just like to make you guys work harder.’”
But while the nasty and salacious occasionally come with the territory, good relationships and pleasant encounters with residents far outnumber the bad ones.
When he was in grad school for writing at Hunter College, the Blooms, an elderly couple who lived in his building, were extremely supportive.
“It was my first year in my MFA program, and I was super discouraged. Mrs. Bloom picked up on that,” Bruno recalled.
They invited him over for dinner and to watch a documentary on playwright August Wilson that they thought would inspire him. Mr. Wilson also came from a working class background and had worked his way up.
“It showed me that I could be myself, a Latin brown guy from the Bronx, and still be an artist,” Bruno said. “They basically saved my life. I’m grateful for them.”
Mr. Bloom has sadly passed on, but Bruno is still in touch with Mrs. Bloom, who now lives in San Francisco.
She wasn’t able to attend his book party last week, but their son came in her stead. Bruno plans on visiting her in December and presenting her with a signed copy of the memoir.
“She had been more proud of me with every day that publication approached,” said Bruno, who is currently researching a novel that will take place in 1950s New York. “On the day the book was published, she was over the moon.”
