The Barbizon
140 East 63rd Street | also 817 Lexington Avenue | Upper East Side | built 1928
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Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1926
A corner synagogue is sold to the group that builds the Barbizon
A synagogue stood on the southeast corner of Lexington Avenue and East 63rd Street before the hotel did. By September 1926 the Amri Realty Company was negotiating to sell its interest in the synagogue and a neighboring Lexington Avenue building to a company headed by James S. Pollard together with William H. Silk, one of the founders of the Allerton hotel chain. That company took title in October, hired Murgatroyd & Ogden to plan a 23-story club hotel, and saw plans filed with the Department of Buildings in December.
“Lex Ave & 63 rd Street Corporation took title to the buildings in October and commissioned Murgatroyd & Ogden to prepare plans for the Barbizon…”
- 1927
The Barbizon Hotel for Women opens on East 63rd Street
The hotel went up on the site of a synagogue, developed by the Allerton chain under William Silk and designed by Everett Murgatroyd and Palmer Ogden. It aimed at women working in the arts, and every applicant needed three references and an interview. Amenities included a gymnasium and a swimming pool.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1932
Titanic survivor Molly Brown dies in her room at the Barbizon
Margaret "Molly" Brown, the 65-year-old Titanic survivor, had come to the hotel in 1931 and was working as an actress. She died there of a brain tumor after losing much of her fortune to her children in a court fight over her husband's estate.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1944
Mademoiselle begins lodging its summer guest editors at the Barbizon
In 1944 Mademoiselle magazine started housing its college guest editors at the Barbizon. The program mentored 20 interns a year and ran for about three and a half decades. Writer Paulina Bren wrote that the hotel's women-only rule gave the young editors the freedom to start their own careers in New York. Weekly rents at the time averaged $12 for a room with running water or $15 with a private bath.
“Mademoiselle magazine also began housing its guest editors at the Barbizon in 1944; the program, which mentored 20 interns per year…”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1946
Elaine Stritch, Cloris Leachman and Nancy Davis live at the Barbizon as young hopefuls
In the mid-1940s the Barbizon housed several women who were about to become famous. Elaine Stritch lived there in 1946, the year of her first Broadway appearance, an ingenue part in Loco. Cloris Leachman stayed in 1946-47 as an understudy for two Broadway shows, fresh from placing third in the Miss America contest. Around 1945-46 Nancy Davis, later Nancy Reagan, roomed with another woman who had also attended Smith and also wanted to act.
- 1947
Grace Kelly moves into the Barbizon while studying acting and modeling
Grace Kelly lived at the Barbizon for three years, from 1947 to 1949, while she studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and modeled part-time. The Landmarks Preservation Commission describes her as the very picture of the elegant young women who gave the hotel its cachet, and notes that the hotel's advertising department made much of her stay. Men were not allowed above the second-floor recital room, a rule that later drew fashion models to the building.
- 1947
Edith Bouvier Beale lives at the Barbizon while modeling and singing in cabaret
Edith Bouvier Beale, later known for Grey Gardens, lived at the Barbizon from 1947 to 1952 while she pursued work as a model and cabaret performer, before she left to care for her mother at Grey Gardens. She was one of many models housed there. Eileen Ford of the Ford Modeling Agency later explained the appeal by saying the young women were safe and could not easily slip out. Carmen Dell'Orefice, Jean Patchett and Dayle Haddon also lived at the hotel.
- 1957
Journalist Gael Greene exposes the lonely lives behind the Barbizon's glamour
In 1957 Gael Greene, a New York Post writer, published a series of articles about Barbizon residents whose lives fell short of glamour, describing loneliness and fear behind the hotel's polished image. The account sits against the hotel's reputation as the most glamorous address in the city for young women, and against Time magazine's quip that it was one of the few places where a girl's virtue was safe overnight.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1963
Sylvia Plath sets The Bell Jar in a fictionalized Barbizon
Sylvia Plath's novel, published in 1963, takes place partly in a thinly disguised version of the Barbizon that she calls the "Amazon." Plath herself had stayed at the hotel, and the book drew on her own 1953 stay in New York.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1980
Barbizon residents protest the owners' plan to close the hotel
In September 1980 the owners, Barbilex, announced they would shut the hotel in January 1981 and move all residents elsewhere. The 114 remaining long-term residents, many of them elderly, protested; 14 were covered by rent control and 100 by rent stabilization. Barbilex dropped the plan and instead turned the building into a 461-room hotel with a physically separate women-only wing, where about half of the residents moved.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1981
The Barbizon begins accepting male guests
After more than fifty years as a women-only residence, the hotel dropped "for Women" from its name and took its first male guests. The first man to stay was reportedly David Cleveland, a Massachusetts doctor who won a raffle. A physically separate women-only wing on the fourth through eleventh floors was kept for existing residents.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1988
New owners Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell fire all 150 Barbizon employees, then must rehire them
After Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell, the Studio 54 operators, joined Philip Pilevsky and Arthur G. Cohen in buying the hotel in November 1988, the owners tried to dismiss all 150 workers. An arbitrator made them rehire the staff within hours. Rubell explained that he had dismissed the union workers to make the union more open to bargaining. The partners meant to turn the Barbizon into a European-style urban spa, and Rubell died the following year.
“The owners attempted to fire all of the hotel's 150 workers, but an arbitrator forced the men to rehire the employees several hours later.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 2012
The city designates the Barbizon a landmark after a civic group's request
The former hotel was converted into the Barbizon/63 condominiums, with 66 apartments, after BPG closed it in 2005. At the request of Friends of the Upper East Side Historic Districts, the Landmarks Preservation Commission began considering it in July 2011, and it designated the building a city landmark in May 2012. Fourteen women, most over 50, had stayed on in rent-controlled apartments at the conversion, paying between $113 and $424 a month.
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- Barbizon 63Wikipedia
- The 1927 Barbizon Hotel for Women -- 140 East 63rd StreetDaytonian in Manhattan
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