The Barbizon Hotel for Women was built in 1927 as a residential hotel and clubhouse for single women who came to New York for professional opportunities.
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The Barbizon (known since 2005 as Barbizon 63), is a building at 140 East 63rd Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City. It was for many decades a female-only residential hotel for young women who came to New York City for professional opportunities but still wanted a “safe retreat” that felt like the family home. The Barbizon was built in 1927, incorporating a blend of Italian Renaissance, Late Gothic Revival, and Islamic decorative elements.
It is a 23-story steel frame building encased in concrete and faced in salmon-colored brick with limestone and terra cotta decorative elements. For most of its existence, it operated as a residential hotel for women, with no men allowed above the ground floor, and they enforced strict dress and conduct rules. The hotel became a more standard hotel when it began admitting men as guests in 1981. In 2002, a $40 million renovation was completed, and they changed the name to The Melrose Hotel.
In 2005 the hotel closed and the building was gutted and rebuilt for condominium use and renamed Barbizon 63. Even after the condo renovation, there were still 14 women living under the old arrangements at the hotel because of rent control in 200. Designed by the prominent hotel architects Murgatroyd & Ogden, the 23rd-story Barbizon Hotel is an excellent example of the 1920s apartment hotel and is notable for its design quality.
In the period following World War I, the number of women attending college approached that of men for the first time. Unlike the graduates of the preceding generation, three quarters of whom had intended to become teachers, these women planned on careers in business, the social sciences, or the professions. Nearly every student expected to find a job upon graduation in a major city. The demand for inexpensive housing for single women led to the construction of several large residential hotels in Manhattan.
Of these, the Barbizon Hotel, which was equipped with the special studio, rehearsal, and concert spaces to attract women pursuing careers became the most renowned. Many of its residents became prominent professional women, including Sylvia Plath, who wrote about her residence at the Barbizon in the novel The Bell Jar.
Michael Callahan’s debut novel Searching for Grace Kelly is set in 1955 at The Barbizon. Callahan’s 2010 article about The Barbizon inspired the novel in Vanity Fair, titled Sorority on E. 63rd By the mid-1970s, the Barbizon was showing its age, was half-filled, and losing money. A floor-by-floor renovation was begun and in February 1981 the hotel began accepting male guests. They converted the tower studios too expensive apartments with long leases inKLM Airlines acquired the hotel by KLM Airlines and its name was changed to the Golden Tulip Barbizon Hotel.
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