Description: Product DescriptionA “captivating portrait” (The Wall Street Journal), both “poignant and intriguing” (The New Republic): from award-winning author Paulina Bren comes the remarkable history of New York’s most famous residential hotel and the women who stayed there, including Grace Kelly, Sylvia Plath, and Joan Didion.Welcome to New York’s legendary hotel for women, the Barbizon.Liberated after WWI from home and hearth, women flocked to New York City during the Roaring Twenties. But even as women’s residential hotels became the fashion, the Barbizon stood out; it was designed for young women with artistic aspirations, and included soaring art studios and soundproofed practice rooms. More importantly still, with no men allowed beyond the lobby, the Barbizon signaled respectability, a place where a young woman of a certain class could feel at home.But as the stock market crashed and the Great Depression set in, the clientele changed, though women’s ambitions did not; the Barbizon Hotel became the go-to destination for any young American woman with a dream to be something more. While Sylvia Plath most famously fictionalized her time there in The Bell Jar, the Barbizon was also where Titanic survivor Molly Brown sang her last aria; where Grace Kelly danced topless in the hallways; where Joan Didion got her first taste of Manhattan; and where both Ali MacGraw and Jaclyn Smith found their calling as actresses. Students of the prestigious Katharine Gibbs Secretarial School had three floors to themselves, Eileen Ford used the hotel as a guest house for her youngest models, and Mademoiselle magazine boarded its summer interns there, including a young designer named Betsey Johnson.The first ever history of this extraordinary hotel, and of the women who arrived in New York City alone from “elsewhere” with a suitcase and a dream, The Barbizon offers readers a multilayered history of New York City in the 20th century, and of the generations of American women torn between their desire for independence and their looming social expiration date. By providing women a room of their own, the Barbizon was the hotel that set them free.Review"More than a biography of a building, the book is an absorbing history of labor and women’s rights in one of the country’s largest cities, and also of the places that those women left behind to chase their dreams." ― The New Yorker"A captivating history... Bren’s book is really about the changing cultural perceptions of women’s ambition throughout the last century, set against the backdrop of that most famous theater of aspiration, New York City....Bren draws on an impressive amount of archival research, and pays tender attention to each of the women she profiles." ― The New York Times Book Review"Among the handful of iconic hotels closely entwined with New York’s cultural history, the Barbizon is perhaps less widely known than the Plaza, Algonquin or Waldorf Astoria. But as Paulina Bren’s beguiling new book makes clear, its place in the city’s storied past is no less deserving...In this captivating portrait, the hotel comes alive again as an enchanted site of a bygone era." ― The Wall Street Journal"The first history of the hotel and the ambitious women who stayed there...poignant and intriguing." ― The New Republic"While Bren’s book is packed with juicy midcentury gossip, it’s also full of lesser-known characters who light up the pages...It all serves as a potent reminder of how important a little space can be in the quest for freedom." ― Bust“With enough smoldering glamour to make Mad Men look dreary…Bren’s captivating book tells the story of this women’s residential hotel, from its construction in 1927 on Manhattan’s 140 East 63rd Street,
Price: 23.95 USD
Location: Citrus Heights, California
End Time: 2025-01-08T05:11:25.000Z
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Item Specifics
All returns accepted: ReturnsNotAccepted
EAN: 9781982123895
Book Title: Barbizon : the Hotel That Set Women Free
Item Length: 9in.
Item Height: 1.1in.
Item Width: 6in.
Author: Paulina Bren
Format: Hardcover
Language: English
Topic: Women, United States / State & Local / Middle Atlantic (DC, De, Md, NJ, NY, Pa), United States / 20th Century, Women's Studies, Customs & Traditions, Historical, Sociology / Urban
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Publication Year: 2021
Genre: Biography & Autobiography, History, Social Science
Item Weight: 16.8 Oz
Number of Pages: 336 Pages
