![]() Vanity Fair called it “a genteel fortress” with “the feel of a luxe convent.” Prospective tenants needed three references and were graded according to their looks, manners, and style. ![]() The Barbizon Hotel for Women advertised itself as the right place for a young respectable career woman to meet the right kind of people, for around a reasonable $11 dollars a week (about $165 today). ![]() It was not a boarding house, known at the time for scratchy black horsehair sofas and dull communal dinner tables-a seedy Victorian vibe-or a co-ed hotel, where one might, god forbid, be confused for a woman of loose morals.Īccording to this fascinating new book The Barbizon: The Hotel That Set Women Free by historian Paulina Bren, after the Roaring Twenties, single women were flocking to New York City in unprecedented numbers and expecting to have careers just like men did. Opened in 1928 on Lexington Avenue and 63rd Street, “the Dollhouse” as it was later nicknamed, was a so-called “respectable” hotel for women, one of several in the city. ![]() From the Jazz Age to Disco, the Barbizon Hotel was a refuge for women fleeing their staid pasts and seeking an exciting, fulfilling Manhattan life. ![]()
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