The Barbizon
The Hotel that Set Women Free
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Narrated by:
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Andi Arndt
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By:
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Paulina Bren
About this listen
A “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 Jacquelyn 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.
©2021 Paulina Bren. All rights reserved. (P)2021 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.Listeners also enjoyed...
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On May 31, 1953, 20-year-old Sylvia Plath arrived in New York City for a one-month stint at Mademoiselle to be a guest editor for its prestigious annual college issue. Over the next 26 days, the bright, blond New England collegian lived at the Barbizon Hotel, attended Balanchine ballets, watched a game at Yankee Stadium, and danced at the West Side Tennis Club. This captivating portrait invites us to see Sylvia Plath before she became an icon - a young woman with everything to live for.
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Things about Mademoiselle Magazine I never knew
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By: Elizabeth Winder
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Come Fly the World
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- Narrated by: Andi Arndt
- Length: 7 hrs and 33 mins
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Glamour, danger, liberation: in a Mad Men–era of commercial flight, Pan Am World Airways attracted the kind of young woman who wanted out, and wanted up. Required to have a college education, speak two languages, and possess the political savvy of a Foreign Service officer, a jet-age stewardess serving on iconic Pan Am between 1966 and 1975 also had to be between 5′3" and 5′9", between 105 and 140 pounds, and under 26 years of age at the time of hire.
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Come see the world!
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A Wild and Precious Life
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In this memoir, which she began before passing away in 2017 and completed by her co-writer, Edie recounts her childhood in Philadelphia, her realization that she was a lesbian, and her active social life in Greenwich Village's electrifying underground gay scene during the 1950s. Edie was also one of a select group of trailblazing women in computing, working her way up the ladder at IBM and achieving their highest technical ranking while developing software.
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🏳️🌈 Wow! 🏳️🌈
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Appetite for America
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- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 18 hrs and 46 mins
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Appetite for America is the incredible real-life story of Fred Harvey - told in depth for the first time ever. As a young immigrant, Fred Harvey worked his way up from dishwasher to household name. With the verve and passion of Fred Harvey himself, Stephen Fried tells the story of how this visionary built his business from a single lunch counter into a family empire whose marketing and innovations we still encounter in myriad ways. Inspiring, instructive, and hugely entertaining, Appetite for America is historical biography that is as richly rewarding.
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I loved listening to this fabulous story!
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By: Stephen Fried
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The Last Love Song
- A Biography of Joan Didion
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- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
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Joan Didion lived a life in the public and private eye with her late husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, whom she met while the two were working in New York City, when Didion was at Vogue and Dunne was writing for Time. They became wildly successful writing partners when they moved to Los Angeles and cowrote screenplays and adaptations together. Didion is well known for her literary journalistic style in both fiction and nonfiction.
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Riveted for 1591 miles
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Hughes: The Private Diaries, Memos and Letters
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- Narrated by: Dan Cashman
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Howard Hughes was a true American original: legendary lover, record-setting aviator, award-winning film producer, talented inventor, ultimate eccentric, and, for much of his lifetime, the richest man in the United States. His desire for privacy was so fierce and his isolation so complete that even now, 25 years after his death, inaccurate stories continue to circulate, and many have been published as fact. Hughes explodes the illusion of his life and exposes the man behind the myth. He was a playboy whose sexual exploits with Hollywood stars were legendary.
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GOOD READ
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The Price of Illusion
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From Joan Juliet Buck, former editor-in-chief of Paris Vogue, comes a dazzling memoir: a fabulous account of four decades spent in the creative heart of London, New York, Los Angeles, and Paris, chronicling Buck's quest to discover the difference between glitter and gold, illusion and reality, and what looks like happiness from the thing itself.
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Narcissistic name dropper
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Eleanor in the Village
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A captivating blend of personal history detailing Eleanor’s struggle with issues of marriage, motherhood, financial independence, and femininity, and a vibrant portrait of one of the most famous neighborhoods in the world, this unique work examines the ways that the sensibility, mood, and various inhabitants of the neighborhood influenced the First Lady’s perception of herself and shaped her political views over four decades, up to her death in 1962.
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Grabs your attention
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The Princess Spy
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When Aline Griffith was born in a quiet suburban New York hamlet, no one had any idea that she would go on to live “a life of glamour and danger that Ingrid Bergman only played at in Notorious” (Time). As the United States enters the Second World War, the young college graduate is desperate to aid in the war effort, but no one is interested in a bright-eyed young woman whose only career experience is modeling clothes.
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Repeat of spy wore red
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By: Larry Loftis
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"The Rest of Us"
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The wave of Eastern European Jewish immigrants who swept into New York in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by way of Ellis Island were not welcomed by the Jews who had arrived decades before. These refugees from czarist Russia and the Polish shtetls who came to America to escape pogroms and persecution were considered barbaric, uneducated, and too steeped in the traditions of the "old country" to be accepted by the more refined and already well-established German-Jewish community. But the new arrivals were tough, passionate, and determined.
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Book 3 of 3
- By Etoile NEOhio on 11-15-22
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City Boy
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- Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
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Story
In the New York of the 1970s, in the wake of Stonewall and in the midst of economic collapse, you might find the likes of Jasper Johns and William Burroughs at the next cocktail party, and you were as likely to be caught arguing Marx at the New York City Ballet as cruising for sex in the warehouses and parked trucks along the Hudson. This is the New York that Edmund White portrays in City Boy: a place of enormous intrigue and artistic tumult.
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Pretense upon pretense.
- By Shalin Desai on 06-01-15
By: Edmund White
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Reclamation
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A Black descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings’ family explores America’s racial reckoning through the prism of her ancestors - both the enslaver and the enslaved.
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Slow start, eventually a worthwhile story
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Philip Roth
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"I don't want you to rehabilitate me," Philip Roth said to his only authorized biographer, Blake Bailey. "Just make me interesting." Granted complete independence and access, Bailey spent almost 10 years poring over Roth's personal archive, interviewing his friends, lovers, and colleagues, and listening to Roth's own breathtakingly candid confessions. Tracing Roth's path from realism to farce to metafiction to the tragic masterpieces of the American Trilogy, Bailey explores Roth's engagement with nearly every aspect of postwar American culture.
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moved
- By Michael on 08-18-21
By: Blake Bailey
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What listeners say about The Barbizon
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Mama V
- 08-14-22
Nice story
I enjoyed listening to this story. The writer sure did have to research this hotels information.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Mari
- 05-31-23
Great history of the hotel and NYC.
I love reading the history of buildings in NYC and I’ve always been curious about The Barbizon because of the famous names that stayed there. The author did a great job taking us through the decades and her description of the hotel during each time period made it though I could picture the lobby and rooms. It’s amazing there was once a time women wore hats and gloves wherever they went. It feels like it must have been another country where people cared about how they looked and acted. Now it seems no one owns a mirror and wouldn’t look into it if they did. And it seems being polite and nice anymore is a crime. My friends and I were born in the early 60’s which meant our parents were born during what I call the elegant period so they instilled in us what they were taught. This book describes this period beautifully along with the unrest and downfall of the later periods. A great history book to add to your collection.
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1 person found this helpful
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- TIA MOSELEY
- 11-24-22
it's a classic!
I didn't expect this book to be as interesting as it was. the narration was excellent and the story fascinating!
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1 person found this helpful
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- HollyHRH
- 11-14-22
Great narrator but difficult to follow.
Great narrator. I'm having trouble figuring out how to explain this book. it is not a novel. it is a bit disjointed sort of like a documentary with a bunch of short stories about famous people who all happen to stay at this hotel. A lot of it seems to be quotes or references and may have been easier to understand reading the print version and not hearing it. it was slightly difficult to listen to, however still interesting.
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- Maria Florida
- 12-18-21
If you didn't like Sylvia Plath before this book
Waaaay too much emphasis on Plath. I'd much rather have heard more about other guests than all the boorish behavior and nasty demeanor of Plath. I understand that she was mentally ill, but it's tough to listen to. I did like the Grace Kelly part,but that was a small part of the book.
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4 people found this helpful
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- jolee
- 06-18-21
Could have been more entertaining
I found this book a little dull .I was a student nurse at Boston City hospital during this time period and our time living at Vose house was much more interesting. We all were 18 yo girls away from home for the first time and under the constricts of a housmother. we seemed to have a lot more fun while maturing over the next 3 years.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Camille Fischer
- 04-05-21
Nostalgic
So interesting to view the changes taking place with life and times and the character of the building itself. The names of residents gives familiarity and reality of our aging along with the life and times of the story. Perhaps this is the reason I found the audio a bit muffled. Nice voice and inflections but wish it came through a little sharper for me.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Frank Donnelly
- 03-23-21
A Very Enjoyable Non Fiction, Mostly Easy Listening
I completely enjoyed this audiobook. This is a non fiction that is clearly written in modern conversational American English. I was able to follow this book on audiobook comfortably. I do wish to mention the are photographs and notes on Kindle that added to my enjoyment of this book.
However some audiobooks are easier reading / listening experiences than others. This is a relatively easy listening experience. as far as content, I also enjoyed this book. It is about an all women hotel in N.Y.C. that was visited by many iconic American Women. It may not be of interest to every reader, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank You....
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13 people found this helpful
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- Paula B.
- 04-22-21
Interesting story but hard to follow
I finished the book because I was curious how it ended. I wasn't expecting so many vignettes of different Barbizon guests, and they became hard to follow. The book was hyper focused on Mademoiselle magazine and Sylvia Plath. I did like how they correlated changing times to changing guests in the hotel, even though the hotel remained unchanged for many decades. It's definitely an interesting and notable part of history.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Junebug
- 03-14-21
things i never knew
good history of eras before my time enjoyable and entertaining
im a new yorker si this was fun fir me
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4 people found this helpful