![]() ![]() They wanted the same amenities men had at men’s clubs. And, the owners knew young women wanted a safe place to call home where they could have maid service and meals, without having to cook. They wanted to experience a job in New York. Young women wanted to go to New York City for many reasons. ![]() Beginning in the 1920s, they capitalized on dreams. The advertisements for the Barbizon Hotel were shrewd. She’s forced to talk about the building in relationship to several of the companies that used the hotel to house young women Katharine Gibbs School for Secretarial and Executive Training for Young Women (Gibbs girls), John Robert Powers Modeling (Powers models), and Mademoiselle. But, she admits in the introduction that there is actually little history of the hotel. Bren is a historian, and she does cover the history of the hotel for women only, from its construction in 1927 until its conversion to condos in 2007. ![]() While it was a fascinating cultural study of a hotel, it was possibly even more of a study of Mademoiselle magazine and its college guest editors who all stayed at the Barbizon during June. The subtitle of Paulina Bren’s nonfiction book, The Barbizon: The Hotel that Set Women Free, is somewhat misleading. ![]()
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