January 4, 2021
Historian Bren (The Greengrocer and His TV) delivers an entertaining and enlightening account of New York’s Barbizon Hotel and the role it played in fostering women’s ambitions in 20th-century America. Bren presents the hotel’s clientele as risk takers who comforted their parents by moving into what was billed as New York’s “most exclusive hotel residence for young women.” Named for a 19th-century French art movement, the Barbizon opened in 1927 and remained in operation until its conversion into luxury condos in 2007. Mademoiselle magazine housed its guest editors there, Bren notes, and the Katharine Gibbs Secretarial School rented two full floors for students and their housemother. Bren profiles noteworthy guests including Molly Brown, who survived the sinking of the Titanic, actors Tippi Hedren and Grace Kelly, singers Shirley Jones and Liza Minnelli (whose mom, Judy Garland, called nearly daily to check on her daughter), and writers Joan Didion and Jean Stafford. Sylvia Plath was one of many future authors and designers (Meg Wolitzer and Betsey Johnson among them) who stayed at the Barbizon after winning a spot in Mademoiselle’s guest editor program; in Plath’s novel The Bell Jar, the hotel was called the Amazon. Carefully researched yet breezily written, this appealing history gives the Barbizon its rightful turn in the spotlight.
Starred review from January 1, 2021
Several authors have written about the Barbizon Hotel, the most famous hotel for women in New York, but Bren (Vassar Coll., The Greengrocer and His TV) excels with this insightful, well-written account. From its founding in 1927, the hotel established itself as a safe haven for beautiful elite and middle-class white women trying to make it in the world of publishing, fashion, and business. Bren chronicles the hotel's ups and downs through the Great Depression and World War II, its famous design, and the social rules enforced by the staff. She also details the lives of some of the Barbizon's most well-known residents, including Molly Brown, Grace Kelly, Sylvia Plath, and Joan Didion, and provides historical context about midcentury single women, careers, and sex. Because of the difficulties of finding specific material about the hotel itself, the book often veers into a history of the magazine Mademoiselle and several modeling agencies, where many residents worked. However, these anecdotes provide additional context into the lives of the women who inhabited the hotel and their lasting influence. VERDICT A must read for anyone interested in the history of 20th-century women's lives, fashion, publishing, and New York.--Kate Stewart, Tucson
Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
January 1, 2021
A rare glimpse behind the doors of New York's famous women-only residential hotel. During the 1920s, young women began to flock to Manhattan, unbound by the restrictions of previous generations. After the Barbizon Hotel for Women opened in 1928, writes Vassar professor Bren, many women showed up "with a suitcase, reference letters, and hope." Among them were aspiring writers, actors, and models who believed the Barbizon would provide a safe haven from which to launch their careers. Two floors were occupied by the Katharine Gibbs Secretarial School, which sought to provide "a pathway for young women to find work." Betsy Talbot Blackwell, editor-in-chief of Mademoiselle, encouraged those who participated in the magazine's guest editor program to reside at the Barbizon, making its hallways a "shelter as well as a testing ground for generations of ambitious women." As the reputation of the Barbizon grew, so did its demand. "It would become the landing pad," writes the author, "the go-to destination for young women from all over the country determined to give their New York dreams a shot." Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar was "entirely based on her time at the Barbizon," and other now-famous residents included Rita Hayworth, Joan Crawford, Liza Minnelli, Grace Kelly, Joan Didion, and Meg Wolitzer. In the 1950s, women oscillated "between acting on their own dreams and following society's expectations for them," and the next decade spelled the end for the institution. "Ironically," writes Bren, it was "the onset of the 1960s women's movement that would sound the death knell for the Barbizon. The residential hotel built in the 1920s on the premise of women's independence and the nurturing of their artistic talents and all-around ambition would become a casualty of that very same goal." Drawing on extensive research, extant letters, and numerous interviews, Bren beautifully weaves together the political climate of the times and the illuminating personal stories of the Barbizon residents. Although some parts of the narrative are repetitive, particularly regarding Plath and Kelly, the book remains captivating. Elegant prose brings a rich cultural history alive.
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Starred review from February 1, 2021
Advertised as "New York's Most Exclusive Hotel Residence for Young Women," the Barbizon opened in 1928, promising, as Bren writes in this scintillating, many-faceted history, "protection and sanctuary." Bren chronicles the innovation and effort, swirling social change, and intense personalities that made the Barbizon a storied launching pad for generations of women in business and the arts. While the hotel liberated women from domestic obligations, it enforced dress and conduct codes and restricted men to the lobby. The Katharine Gibbs Secretarial School housed its white-gloved students there, while Mademoiselle took rooms every summer from 1944 to 1979 for winners of its prestigious guest-editor contest. Bren profiles the "forward-looking" magazine's editor in chief, Betsy Talbot Blackwell, and an array of guest editors, including Sylvia Plath, who savaged the program in her novel, The Bell Jar; Joan Didion; Barbara Chase, the first African American guest editor in 1956; and Janet Burroway, who offers particularly intriguing insights. Also home to models and actresses (Grace Kelly, Ali McGraw), the hotel was called, disconcertingly, the ""dollhouse."" It's now a condo tower. Varying delectably in cadence, from high-heel tapping and typewriter clacking to sinuous and reflective passages analyzing the complex forms of adversity Barbizon women faced over the decades, Bren's engrossing and illuminating inquiry portrays the original Barbizon as a vital microcosm of the long quest for women's equality.
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