The Barbizon by Paulina Bren (ebook reader browser TXT) 📕

row to set off alarm bells about possible improprieties. Fire-hazard cooking appliances in the rooms were also banned, as evidenced in the backroom closet full of confiscated appliances, enough with which to open a store: “hot plates for cheap meals, bottle warmers for morning coffee or midnight bouillon, hair driers and sun lamps.” (The extent of Mae Sibley’s power was such that it was not unusual for a young resident to begin a sentence with: “Mrs. Sibley would kill me if she heard this.…”) In the afternoons, free tea was served, particularly handy for those low on funds—although Mrs. Sibley did not say as much—and there were card games, backgammon, and lecture series in the evenings. Carolyn knew about the no-men-allowed rule but was surprised to hear that after sundown, male elevator operators were switched out for female ones.

Carolyn found her room sparse and small. But although the tiny room felt “like being in a closet,” she did not mind; the floral drapes and matching bedspread gave everything a homey feel. She took off her shoes, sank her stockinged feet into the green carpet, and reached for the speaker box above the bed: she turned the knob, and classical music hummed through the room. She had found escape at $18 a week. Instead of cleaning for her younger half siblings, the hotel maids now tidied her room while she was out. She had her savings and then of course her looks. But her savings and prize money, even if an impressive two thousand dollars, could not last forever.

Young women of varying backgrounds and means slept within the walls of the Barbizon. There were the Carolyns, the girls from nowhere, both literally and figuratively, but there were also the debutantes. In the infamous documentary film Grey Gardens, as Little Edie Beale and her mother Big Edie Bouvier, cousin of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, battle it out in their derelict Hamptons home among far too many cats, Little Edie longingly reminisces of her time at the Barbizon. She lived there from 1947—when Carolyn also arrived—to 1952, dabbling in modeling, waiting for the chance to make it in show business. Just as her lucky break was about to happen (or so she believed), she was yanked back to the Hamptons by her mother, who claimed she could no longer afford the bills but in fact feared being left alone. (The notorious cats first began to accumulate while Little Edie was staying at the Barbizon. Years later, she would write to a friend: “They were given to mother by a client of my lawyer brother who lived near us. Mother trained them—they were house pets. I was living at the Barbizon and had a job at the time. The cats had nothing to do with me though everyone always blamed me for everything!”)

But it was the Carolyns, not the debutantes, who truly understood that their time at the Barbizon offered a finite window of opportunity—while they were still young, pretty, desirable, driven. Those assets could lead to secretarial positions, to modeling gigs, to acting jobs. Yet all the women at the Barbizon, from the debutantes to the Carolyns, shared the same goal: marriage. As bold as one might be, however big one might dream, as a young woman you knew that the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow was marriage. Had to be marriage. Even if a part of you longed to be an actress, a writer, a model, an artist. The debutantes did not have to travel far to meet eligible bachelors (there were plenty enough within their own milieu—from Papa’s country club to the annual balls), and so the Barbizon meant a little fun, perhaps some notoriety or success before marriage. But the Carolyns were there to make it in New York: to become something and meet someone. Back home was the life that the Carolyns’ mothers had, and that was the last thing they wanted for themselves.

From the first day in New York, Carolyn Schaffner dressed as if she were going to work even as she had nowhere to go. Wearing white gloves, like the Gibbs girls, she headed out into the streets alongside the droves of other young ladies of the Barbizon, but whereas they headed to offices and studios and training schools, she wandered the streets, exploring. It was during her city wanderings that Carolyn came upon the Horn & Hardart automat on Fifty-Seventh Street and Sixth Avenue. The automat, originally a German import, was the fast-food chain restaurant equivalent of its day, and the Horn & Hardart automat was the most famous in New York, filled with silver banks of art deco, coin-operated vending machines. Carolyn loved it immediately. She would change a dollar for nickels and then stroll among the many glass boxes, peering in to see what tempted her. Once she had finally decided, she dropped in the nickel, turned the dial, and pulled open the glass door. Coffee came out of a dolphin-head silver spout, and the steam table offered up Salisbury steak with mashed potatoes. She took her food upstairs to one of the tables by the windows and ate slowly, lingering, looking out onto West Fifty-Seventh Street.

It was only a week after arriving, as she sat and daydreamed at Horn & Hardart, that a man came up to her and asked to sit down. He told her he was a photographer and that she’d be perfect for the camera. He asked if she had ever considered modeling, and if she would like to meet the famous modeling agent Harry Conover. Carolyn, being the small-town girl she was, but also the young woman who knew she had a finite window at the Barbizon, said she would indeed like to meet Conover. The photographer wrote down an address—52 Vanderbilt Avenue. She took the slip of paper.

Carolyn had been getting to know the city and also the Barbizon’s residents. Every Monday, she carefully studied the week’s events of social teas and lectures, typed out