When I picked up this book at the library I wasn't sure what to expect. I had never heard of The Barbizon hotel in New York City and was completely unaware of the essential role it played in sheltering women (for a variety of reasons) throughout the 20th century. However, I was intrigued by the subtitle of the book so I decided to take a chance...I was not disappointed!

In this book, Paulina Bren tells the stories of the women who resided at the hotel and documents the history of the famous Barbizon which catered to women when women were not allowed to rent a hotel room after 6pm and single women working and living in NYC had very limited options for safe affordable housing. The Barbizon was a residential hotel and some women stayed only a week but many stayed for months, years, and some even a lifetime. The history of the Barbizon is intricately tied to the stories of the women who worked at Mademoiselle magazine and the internship program it ran for young women, all of whom stayed at The Barbizon, including Sylvia Plath.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I'm so glad I picked it up!! I have since recommended it to several people and they also gave it rave reviews! Additionally, I am looking forward to picking up Sylvia Plath's 'The Bell Jar' again which is based on her time spent in NYC working for Mademoiselle magazine and living at The Barbizon!!

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I've always been fascinated by New York's women's hotels. My great-grandmother lived in the Martha Washington Hotel off and on and there were books and movies where the female protagonist was heading off to New York and the Barbizon. This story captures what it meant to be at the Barbizon in its heyday, when aspiring writers like Joan Didion and Sylvia Plath served as interns for a summer at Madmoiselle Magazine (which turns out to have been quite progressive despite the pittance paid for the prestigious internships). We learn about the models from Powers and Ford who had some responsibility for the hotel's being called the "Dollhouse." The Katherine Gibbs secretarial students, schooled in dress (always a hat), manners and etiquette as well as job skills lived at the Barbizon. But more importantly, we learn about the rise and fall of the business/building itself; its famous inhabitants, the suicides, the elderly women who never left and paid cheap rent in their rent controlled rooms until they died, long after the hotel was no longer the Barbizon. I liked the stand alone chapters on some the famous residents. There is no question that the Barbizon was basically an only white, upper class female hotel for most of the time it was a women only hotel. There is an interesting take on the year Madmoiselle chose a Black woman for one of its spots, Barbara Chase-Riboud from Temple University. She was allowed to live there, but without it being spoken, the pool in the basement was off limits. All in all a worthwhile and enjoyable read that scratched my itch to better understand NY's women's hotels.

Fascinating read with a great feminist perspective.

A fascinating description of a hotel in Midtown Manhattan where young girls from small towns in the Midwest landed in order to try out New York City. Without a place like this, their parents would never have let them come to the evil metropolis. Amazing how many impressive women started out here…from Sylvia Plath to Joan Didion to Betty Buckley. The hotel opened in 1928 and lasted fifty years…girls came and went, some never left and a shockingly high number committed suicide, usually on Sunday nights when the Saturday night date hadn’t worked out.

If I could give it two and a half stars I think I would. This book is not so much about the Barbizon, but uses the Barbizon as a MacGuffin to talk mostly about Mademoiselle magazine in the 1950s. Told as if it were narrated by a large cast of characters, consisting of women who were basically glorified interns at Madamoiselle in the 1950s, the book struggles to find a workable voice and structure.

The subject seems to be how the single sex hotel was a safe space for young women to explore the idea of careers outside of marriage and children. If the book were more successful in fleshing out this theme, I would have been more satisfied. As it turns out, there is a lot of minute detail about individual women and their experiences at the hotel. In particular, the author is very interested in celebrities like Sylvia Plath, Ali, McGraw, and Grace Kelly.

And for those of you who know me as a nitpicker, you will not be disappointed that I was very irritated by a number of weird grammatical choices, and anachronisms. Phrases like “the zeitgeist of the time“ and “Abels proscribed to the rule… “ drove me nuts, as you might expect. This does not seem to be a problem of copy editing so much as the author herself not being much of a writer with a commitment to language and craft.

The final chapter somewhat redeems the book. It sums up the place of a hotel like the Barbizon in 20th century women’s history, and the ebb and flow of societal progress for women. This part of the book is what I would’ve expected from a history professor. I wish this voice had been more present throughout the book.

Fascinating look at an NYC institution and at the changing lives of young women of a particular class in the city during the 20th century.