Great hotel boring book. Very contrived. Only read the first chapter. ( )

Audiobook read by Andi Arndt

Subtitle: The Hotel That Set Women Free

I remember reading Mademoiselle magazine when I was a teen, anxiously poring over the “College” issue and imagining myself on some distant campus, dressed “just so.” I never saw myself in New York City, however, HAD I imagined that I would have imagined myself living at the Barbizon.

Bren has done her research and chronicles the history of the iconic hotel from its conception and construction in 1927 to its eventual conversion to multi-million dollar condominiums in 2007. As she tells the story of the hotel, she tells the story of women in America, of their hopes, dreams and aspirations as contrasted with society’s expectations and the structured roles assigned to “proper” women. The list of famous women who lived there is impressive, from writers such as Joan Didion and Sylvia Plath, to film stars (Grace Kelly and Ali McGraw), but it is the countless others who grabbed the chance for independence and success who should really be celebrated. Brava, ladies!

The audiobook is narrated by Andi Arndt and she does a marvelous job of it. Even my husband got hooked on the story when he listened as we drove to dinner one evening. ( )

I haven't rated this, because I think how the reader likes it will depend on their interests. I was most interested in the changing social mores that the Barbizon, and I would suppose hundreds of other residential hotels across the country in other cities helped facilitate. Bren also spent a lot of time on New York City, female celebrities who stayed at the Barbizon, and Mademoiselle magazine, which is almost as much of the subject of the book as the Barbizon. I wasn't sufficiently interested in these somewhat tangential things, and it took almost a week to plow my way through a book that's only 300 pages. To be fair, a friend thinks that all this sounds fascinating, and she wants to read the book. A matter of taste and interest.

Mademoiselle had a "guest editor" program that brought young women with some literary potential to New York for a month to shadow working editors and participate in a dizzying round of events; they generally stayed at the Barbizon. the Gibbs Secretarial School, and Powers Modeling Agency also housed their students and models there.

Bren seems fascinated with the Mademoiselle crowd, especially Sylvia Plath. I read her Bell Jar, but I don't remember the parts based on her stay at the "Amazon.". We also get long accounts of the lives of those who became successful, generally in New York, and a great deal about office politics at the magazine. Sylvia Plath was guest editor the year that I was born - which puts it at a awkward point that makes this both too recent and familiar as well as too old to be very enlightening or interesting.

What I did think got missed, is much about the women who lived throughout their adult lives at the Barbizon. Bren obviously does not approve of marriage as the be-all and end-all of life, which makes what we hear about them, there doesn't seem to be much from them, odd. Brens prints part of an article by a journalist who was "under cover" at the Barbizon, who paints these women as rather pathetic figures. It's not clear to me that she or Bren talked very much to them to find out how they saw their own lives,. Bren doesn't really take much interest in them until the last feisty survivors are suing for (and winning) their tenant rights. I realize that it is much harder to learn about ordinary people than famous ones, but I would have liked to have seen more. Maybe they learned to enjoy their lives, Whatever they may have thought at 18 or 20 is not necessarily what they thought for the rest of their lives.

The Barbizon was a hotel located on the Upper Eastside of Manhattan. Built in 1927 as a residential hotel for women, it offered a safe place to stay and amenities that men’s residential hotels had long considered necessary. At the Barbizon women could enjoy a small charmingly decorated room, daily maid service, a private dining room, cultural programs, a swimming pool, and a library with the newest bestsellers.

In the years between the wars most women still expected to marry but some wanted to experience independence first. The Depression caused others to have to start supporting themselves. For those that came to New York City the Barbizon was the ideal place to live. Some businesses including Gibbs Secretarial School and Ford Modeling Agency required residence there. Many young women hoping to become professional models, actors, musicians and artists lived there as well. It remained a residential hotel for women until 1981 when occupancy was opened to men. In 2002 it became a hotel and in 2005 the building was converted to luxury condos called Barbizon 63.

The first portion of the book covering the history of working women early in the twentieth century was the most interesting to me. Understandably the experiences of specific woman became more common in the Barbizon’s later years, the 1950s through the 1970s, and chapters were devoted to both Sylvia Plath and Joan Didion. There were many other young residents during those years whose names are now well known including Candice Bergan, Barbara Chase-Riboud and Grace Kelly. A historian and professor at Vassar, Bren has written a well researched and enlightning social history of the Barbizon and the women who lived there. ( )