{"id":196160,"date":"2021-03-06T23:09:40","date_gmt":"2021-03-06T20:09:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/inside-nycs-ladies-only-barbizon-hotel\/"},"modified":"2021-03-06T23:09:40","modified_gmt":"2021-03-06T20:09:40","slug":"inside-nycs-ladies-only-barbizon-hotel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/inside-nycs-ladies-only-barbizon-hotel\/","title":{"rendered":"#Inside NYC’s ladies-only Barbizon Hotel"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Inside NYC’s ladies-only Barbizon Hotel<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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Evelyn Echols always dreamed of making her way to New York City. So, in April 1936, for her 21st birthday, she and her best friend bought cheap overnight tickets from the Midwest to the Big App<\/a>le. The first thing they did? Headed straight to Lexington Avenue and 63rd Street, maneuvered way past the men hanging around \u201clike vultures\u201d and booked a room at the Barbizon.<\/p>\n

The hotel was \u201cwhere almost every unmarried woman who came to New York\u201d resided, according to historian Paulina Bren\u2019s delightful new book \u201cThe Barbizon: The Hotel That Set Women Free<\/a>\u201d (Simon & Schuster). It\u2019s only a slight exaggeration. Joan Crawford, Cloris Leachman, Ali MacGraw and Joan Didion all stayed there. Grace Kelly shimmied down its hallways half-naked, and a pouty Rita Hayworth posed in its gym for a Life magazine shoot, wearing a two-piece playsuit and heels.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sylvia Plath threw all her clothes off the Barbizon\u2019s roof on her last day as a magazine intern \u2014 an act she would later immortalize, along with the hotel, in her novel \u201cThe Bell Jar.\u201d Judy Garland sent her daughter Liza Minnelli there, and then drove the front desk crazy when she called every three hours to check up on her.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yet by the 1970s, the once-lively Barbizon had lost its allure. Women flung themselves off the roof. There was a murder. The lobby had a hole in the ceiling. In 2006, after several unsuccessful attempts at rebranding, the hotel was converted into luxury condominiums.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Barbizon is such a fascinating place,\u201d Bren told The Post. \u201cBut it isn\u2019t as well known as other New York institutions, like the Chelsea Hotel, and it should be.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Amenities
Amenities at the Barbizon included libraries, a rooftop garden, a swimming pool and a gym \u2014 where Rita Hayworth (in black) posed for Life magazine.<\/figcaption>
Philippe Halsman Archive <\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Her book traces the rise and fall of Manhattan\u2019s most famous women-only residence and burnishes its reputation, not just as a boarding house for glamour girls, but as a New York City icon.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBy charting the Barbizon\u2019s history, you can also tell the story of New York City\u2019s 20th century and women\u2019s place,\u201d she said. \u201cI wanted to reinsert the Barbizon into those histories.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Barbizon wasn\u2019t the first women\u2019s residential hotel in New York City \u2014 the Martha Washington opened in 1903. But the 1920s saw a spate of new ladies\u2019 residences for the thousands of flappers flocking to the Big Apple in search of fame, fortune and fun. These modern women didn\u2019t want to stay, as Bern put it, in a \u201cdowdy old boarding house,\u201d but they couldn\u2019t rent an apartment on their own either.\u00a0<\/p>\n

These new residential hotels offered a solution, promising independence, respectability and also camaraderie. \u201cThey had no kitchens, so [women] wouldn\u2019t be bogged down with chores,\u201d Bren said. \u201cThey had daily maid service. They had common areas that were very glamorous where they could social<\/a>ize, and they cost less than men\u2019s residences \u2014 since women often had the lowest paying jobs and earned pennies to the dollar compared to men.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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You could have your moment in the sun and be free, but that moment has a sell-by date.<\/p>\n

Paulina Bren on the Barbizon Hotel\u2019s place in women\u2019s liberation<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n

The Barbizon, though, was one of a kind. The 27-floor, salmon-hued residence opened in 1928, and took its name from a 19th-century artists community outside Paris. \u201cFrom the beginning the Barbizon was built as a fantasy hotel for aspiring female creatives,\u201d Bern said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In addition to its 720 single-occupancy rooms \u2014 so tiny that \u201cone could open and close the door while lying in bed\u201d \u2014 the hotel included galleries where its aspiring artists could show their work and practice rooms for budding musicians and dancers to rehearse. It also had roof gardens, several libraries, a swimming pool and a gym, as well as a restaurant and coffee shop attached.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Its first notable resident was \u201cThe Unsinkable\u201d Molly Brown, the tenacious Titanic survivor who, after a scandalous divorce, moved to France, became an actress and was dubbed the \u201cuncrowned queen of Paris.\u201d In 1931, at 63, this self-proclaimed \u201cdaughter of adventure\u201d moved back to New York and made herself at home at the Barbizon, where, despite her age, she matched the other residents\u2019 ambition, moxie \u2014 and class.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was exclusive,\u201d said Bren. No men were allowed past the lobby, and potential residents had to bring recommendation letters and references \u2014 and look the part. The severe, hawk-eyed front-desk manager, Mae Sibley, rated every girl who crossed her threshold, and gave those tenants who stayed out for too many nights in a row or dressed slovenly a stern talking-to.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was a respectable, glamorous place,\u201d Bren said. It was the kind of boarding house where parents from the Midwest could feel safe sending their innocent daughters, and where elite women\u2019s colleges and the posh Junior Leagues rented out spaces for their meetings. The Katharine Gibbs Secretarial School for secretaries rented out two whole floors for its students \u2014 who breezed in and out wearing their regulation kitten heels and white gloves \u2014 and several modeling agencies put their new recruits there.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Among
Among the women who lived at the Barbizon were (clockwise from top left) Joan Didion, Phylicia Rashad, Sylvia Plath, Liza Minnelli \u2014 whose mother, Judy Garland, drove staff crazy by constantly checking in on the young actress \u2014 and Grace Kelly. Their stories are told in the new book \u201cThe Barbizon: The Hotel that Set Women Free\u201d by Paulina Bren.<\/figcaption>
Getty Images (4); Bettmann Archive <\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cEileen Ford would often pay out of her own pocket for her models who had just arrived in New York [to stay at the Barbizon],\u201d Bren said. \u201cIt was worth it \u2014 she knew they couldn\u2019t get up to anything since men were not allowed.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Which isn\u2019t to say men weren\u2019t drawn to it. By the 1940s, the Barbizon was so chock-full of models and actresses that it became known as the \u201cdollhouse.\u201d Author J.D. Salinger used to pick up residents at the Barbizon\u2019s adjacent coffee shop, telling them he was a hockey player for the Montreal Canadiens. Countless young men, meanwhile, disguised themselves as doctors (physicians were allowed to make house calls) in order to breach the hotel\u2019s security. Mrs. Sibley called it \u201cthe oldest gag in the Barbizon.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Not everyone who stayed at the hotel conquered New York City, of course. In 1957, journalist Gael Greene went undercover at the hotel and wrote a 10-part series<\/a>, \u201cLone Women,\u201d for The Post, about the hotel\u2019s less illustrious residents: the starving artists, lonely wallflowers and spinsters who had checked into the hotel in the 1930s and never left.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a deep contradiction [in the idea] of a hotel that sets women free,\u201d said Bren. \u201cOn one hand, it allowed women a place to arrive in New York that was safe where they could pursue their dreams. Yet it could only free you up to a point because of all the social restrictions on women, particularly during the Great Depression \u2014 when women who worked were seen to be taking jobs away from men \u2014 and after World War II, when marriage really was the end goal. The Barbizon was where you could have your moment in the fun and be free, but that moment had a sell-by date.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n
\"The<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

There were several suicides which swept the hotel in the 1950s and made headlines in the city\u2019s tabloids. \u201cOn Sundays, one looked out the window to see if the coroner was there,\u201d Bren writes. \u201cIt was always Sundays because Saturday was date night, and then came disappointment. Some women would hang themselves from the curtain rods.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Barbizon started to lose its luster when New York started to lose its luster,\u201d said Bren. By the 1970s, as the city descended into crime and a recession, the Barbizon too began to look \u201crun down and dowdy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a massive hole in the stunning painted ceiling of the Italianate lobby,\u201d Bern said. The Gibbs Secretarial School pulled out in 1972, emptying 200 rooms. Hotel occupancy dropped to 40 percent. In 1975, one of the Barbizon\u2019s elderly residents was found murdered in her 11th-floor room.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The sexual revolution didn\u2019t help.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWomen wanted to live on their own and didn\u2019t want to make complex plans to have sex,\u201d said Bern. \u201cPlus you had a lot of feminists questioning whether the idea of separating the sexes was really liberating or not.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Barbizon went through various renovations after the 1970s, even opening up to men in the 1980s, until 2005, when it \u201cbecame \u2014 of course \u2014 luxury condos, like much of New York City,\u201d according to Bern.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yet the Barbizon\u2019s sorority spirit isn\u2019t quite dead. Several of its old-timers \u2014 those \u201cwomen\u201d Greene had written about \u2014 refused to leave their rent-controlled units at the hotel, and the Barbizon had no choice but to give them their own space on the fourth floor. There are five such women left. And while they declined interviews, Bern did send them all copies of the book.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt gives me great pleasure to think that they may be sitting in the beds of the Barbizon reading about the Barbizon,\u201d said Bern. \u201cI love that they are still there.\u201d\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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