This interesting non-fiction read is about the residential Barbizon Hotel built in the 1920's with the intention to nurture women's independence and growth in an era decades before the women's movement. Got lots of good reveiws. Here is a summary: This book is about, of course, the eponymous Barbizon hotel that operated from the 1920s until the early 2000s in New York City. Until the mid-80s, it was a hotel exclusive for women – not the only one of its kind, but the most iconic and glamorous. It focuses on some notable women who were guests at the hotel like Grace Kelly, Joan Didion, and Sylvia Plath (who wrote it into The Bell Jar as the Amazon hotel. The Barbizon weaves together the stories of the young guest editors at Mademoiselle Magazine who stayed at the hotel for glorious summers, women who worked for Ford Modeling Agency or the Katharine Gibbs Secretarial School, and countless other starry-eyed young women following their dreams in Manhattan.
But the book is also, and more importantly, about the shifting social/cultural expectations and norms for women in America throughout the twentieth century. When the hotel first opened, it was freeing to a certain type (white, middle+ class) of woman – it gave them her ability to travel, to be independent, while still maintain respectability, in a way otherwise impossible. It follows the progress and the backlash to progress that women faced throughout the century: gaining independence in the flapper-era ‘20s, being shamed back into the home in the Depression-era ‘30s, going back to the workplace in the ‘40s during WWII, returning home again the in ‘50s, and so on. Throughout all of it, until the ‘00s when the hotel was turned into condos, the Barbizon hotel remained emblematic of and crucial to the ongoing change
I plan to go to Mainstream around 5ish for happy hour, pls note in comments if you are interested.
