Even Today, Women’s Hotels Can Offer a Special Haven for Travelers

“Young women endeavoring to surround themselves with the cultural advantages to which they are accustomed--whether their residence in New York is permanent or temporary--will find the Barbizon the ideal environment.”

This appeal to potential clients is from the 1939 brochure for the hotel on New York’s Upper East Side. The 600-room Barbizon opened in 1929, and for the next 50 years, catered exclusively to women.

Like many other women’s residential hotels in big cities in the early part of the 20th century, it sought to provide a comfortable and respectable home away from home to secretaries and salesclerks, aspiring ballerinas and actresses. Its clientele included Grace Kelly (before she became princess of Monaco), Candice Bergen, the McGuire Sisters and Liza Minnelli (whose mother, Judy Garland, reportedly called the manager daily to check up on her daughter). The hotel had a swimming pool, badminton courts, a solarium, a recital room and a library, where meetings of the Barbizon Book and Pen Club were held. Men were allowed in lobby areas but not upstairs, and there were housemothers on each floor to make sure of it.

A room cost $2.50 in 1939. To get in, young women had to provide references.

The concept of women’s hotels now sounds obsolete and even peculiar. But the old-fashioned idea is still appealing, and I would be happy to provide references to stay in a secure, reasonably priced women’s hotel.

After their heyday from about 1940 to 1960, most fell on hard times and were occupied largely by low-income women. But the renovated Barbizon reopened as a hotel for both sexes in the late ‘70s, as have New York’s old Allerton Club for Women and the Martha Washington more recently (with chichi new names, Habitat Hotel and Thirty Thirty, respectively).

L.A.’s best-known women’s residence hotel was the Hollywood Studio Club at 1215 Lodi Place. Now it’s a YMCA-run Job Corps dormitory just north of the Paramount Studios lot. The handsome Italianate building, designed in 1926 by architect Julia Morgan (of Hearst Castle fame), still evokes the good old days when a mother could send her daughter to Hollywood to become a star without worrying that her offspring would go astray. To it came such hopefuls as Dorothy Malone, Gale Storm and Donna Reed, paying $8 to $12 per night for a room, including breakfast and dinner. When money got tight, the club carried them to their next paycheck. (The continually strapped novelist, Ayn Rand, a longtime resident, once got a special gift of $50 from the club, but is said to have spent it immediately on black lingerie.)

The history of the 86-room Mary Elizabeth Inn in the lower Nob Hill neighborhood of San Francisco is less star-studded but still endearing. It was founded in 1914 by Methodist philanthropist Elizabeth Snyder Glide. Since then, the inn has helped single women trying to make it in the city by providing furnished rooms for $49 to $59 a night, with dormitory-style baths, a sun room, TV lounges and laundry facilities. “Guests come from all over the world and are women in transition with limited finances,” says director Kae Lewis.

The Mary Elizabeth Inn is much like YWCA residence hotels all over the world, which began opening their doors to uprooted women a century ago. Today, some still accept only women. Others have become coed.

In the spirit of women’s residence hotels of yesteryear, here is a short list of such accommodations:

* Oakford Darling Harbour All-Suite Hotel (near Sydney), 252 Sussex St., Darling Harbour, Australia; telephone 011-61-2-8280-5000, fax 011-61-2-8280-5050, Internet https://www.oakford.com. With a floor of one-bedroom suites for women only. Rates begin about $120.

* Naari Women’s Guesthouse, DA/8B, DDA Flats, Phase 2, Munirka, New Delhi, India 110067; tel. 011-91-11-618-3163, fax 011-91-11-618-7401, Internet https://www .allworld-vacation.com/india/ind2.htm, e-mail naari@del3.vsnl.net.in. Rooms with private bath and ceiling fans or air conditioners begin at $14.

* Hotel Hanseatin, Dragonerstall 11 20355, Hamburg, Germany; tel. 011-49-40-341-345, fax 011-49-40-345-825, Internet https://www.w4w.net/hanseatin/self.html. Rooms with private bath begin at $53..

* Basil Street Hotel, Basil Street, Knightsbridge, London SW3 1AH; tel. 011-44-20-7581-3311, fax 011-44-20-7581-3693, Internet https://www.absite.com/basil. For men and women; but in a private women’s club within the hotel, doubles with private bath begin at $285, doubles with shared bath at $165.

* The Barbizon Hotel & Towers, 140 E. 63rd St., New York, NY 10021; tel. (800) 223-1020 or (212) 838-5700, fax (212) 888-4271, Internet https://www.thebarbizon.com. Rates begin at $200.

* Habitat Hotel, 130 E. 57th St., New York, NY 10022; tel. (800) 255-0482 or (212) 753-8841, fax (212) 829-9605, Internet https://www.habitat-ny.com. Rates begin at $95 with shared bath, $145 with private bath.

* Thirty Thirty, 30 E. 30th St., New York, NY 10016; tel. (212) 689-1900, fax (212) 689-0023, Internet https://www.thirtythirty-nyc.com. Rates begin at $115.

* Mary Elizabeth Inn, 1040 Bush St., San Francisco, CA 94109; tel. (415) 673-6768, fax (415) 441-7451, Internet https://www.globalstore.com.au/maryei.htm. Rates begin at $49.

* World YWCA, 16 Ancienne Route, CH-1218 Grand-Saconnex, Geneva, Switzerland; tel. 011-41-22-929-6040, Internet https://www.worldywca.org. Copies of the YWCA directory are available for $5.