I'm afraid I can't help at all about Bess Hawes or Steiner. With this much interest, I will go to where Spec's was and see what/who is there.

I lived in Europe for a while and when I came home, I went to one of my favorite parts of Boston. The way you get there is to go to the Scollay Square Station of MTA Song fame. I came out of the subway to find that Scollay Square was gone! It had been ripped away to make room for the new government center and other civic improvements One of the casualties was "the Old Howard", a great theater that had hosted in its day the acting family, the Booths - doing Shakespeare, and Gypsy Rose Lee and Sally Rand doing something else.

But I digress -

SD