The Barbizon

little of it even as shenoticed the engines had stopped. It was not until James McGough, aGimbels department store buyer from Philadelphia, ghoulishly appeared ather window, waving his arms and shouting, “Get your life preserver!” thatshe layered on clothes and headed out. Despite his alarm, up on deck Molly confronted awide-eyed reluctance to board the lifeboats. She tried to cajole her fellow femalefirst-class passengers onto them until she herself was unceremoniously tossed down intoone by the Titanic’s crew. As the lifeboat pulled away, she heard gunshots;it was officers shooting at people on the lower decks who were desperate to jump intothe boats reserved for the rich and now launching into the water half-empty.
In the dark, as lifeboat six bobbed in the water, Molly watched in horror.Those around her were crying out for loved ones still on board as water engulfed theTitanic until it was entirely gone, vanished, swallowed up whole. Screamsrang out even as everything else had gone silent. It was night, the sea was pitch-black,and the utter incompetence of the two gentlemen on lifeboat six made their hopelessnessall the more vivid. Molly Brown, disgusted, took over. She directed the rowing and thewill to live, peeling off layers of clothing to give to those who had been lessquick-witted. Around dawn, the lifeboat was picked up by the Carpathia, and bythe time she and her fellow survivors had pulled into New York Harbor some days later,Molly, ever the activist, had established the Survivor’s Committee, become itschairwoman, and raised $10,000 for its destitute. She wired herDenver attorney: “Water was fine and swimming good. Neptune was exceedingly kindto me and I am now high and dry.” Neptune had been less kind to her friend JohnJacob Astor IV; the richest man on board the Titanic was among the dead.
It was almost twenty years later when the Unsinkable Molly Brown took aroom at the Barbizon, and the world looked very different despite that same night sky.World War I had been the catalyst for so much change, but for Molly personally, herseparation from her husband, J. J. Brown, had been just as significant. They had partedways: he a womanizer and she an activist. She was a feminist, a child-protectionadvocate, and a unionizer before it was fashionable to be any of those things. J.J. wasa rags-to-riches gold-mining millionaire of Irish descent, and together he and Molly hadstepped out of their shared poverty into great wealth, finding a place in Denver’shigh society. After their separation, and then J.J.’s death in 1922, which leftthe family with no will and instead five years of disputation, both Denver’ssociety circles and Molly’s children turned their backs on her. But this merelystoked her earlier dreams for a life on the stage. Enamored of the legendary Frenchactress Sarah Bernhardt, Molly Brown moved to Paris to study acting, performing inThe Merchant of Venice and Antony and Cleopatra. She had both wit and spirit, the kind that could be appreciated there, even in awoman of sixty, and she was soon dubbed the “uncrowned queen of smartParis.”
However exaggerated the Molly Brown mythology became, her gumption wasreal. She once wrote of herself: “I am a daughter ofadventure. This means I never experience a dull moment and must be prepared for anyeventuality. I never know when I may go up in an airplane and come down with a crash, orgo motoring and climb a pole, or go off for a walk in the twilight and return all mussedup in an ambulance. That’s my arc, as the astrologers would say. It’s a goodone, too, for a person who would rather make a snap-out than a fade-out of life.”Molly Brown was no flapper, far from it, even as her adventurism might have made her onehad she been younger. But she was not younger, and she harbored an antipathy toward theflappers, these young women of the Jazz Age who seemed to define themselves by onesingle hard-won victory that Molly Brown and her generation had worked hard to achieve:sexual liberation. Even so, it was here, at the Barbizon Club-Residence for Women, whereMolly Brown decided to stay when she returned to New York from Paris—sharing spacewith the young women of whom she publicly disapproved but whose core spirit she mightwell have understood. She chose to stay here because, like them, she wanted totest out different versions of herself, and the Barbizon was the place to do that.
A 1927 street view of the Barbizon, just as its construction wasnearing completion.
Molly was delighted with her accommodations. She sent the Barbizonbrochure to her Denver friend, marked up and defaced to explain her new life in NewYork. There is even a radio in every room!, she wrote. Here, circled in thickblack ink, was the northwest turret with a bricked-in terrace, looking down onto thecorner of Lexington Avenue and Sixty-Third Street. Inside was her suite, one of the bestrooms to be had, but even so it was modest, much like the hotel’s regular rooms,which featured a narrow single bed, small desk, a chest of drawers, and a pint-sizearmchair. One could open and close the door while lying in bed, and you barelyhad to get up to put something away in the dresser. Humble as itmight be, she wrote to her friend that she used her room as her “workshop,”“piled high to the ceiling with things.”
She circled another Gothic window even farther up, on the nineteenthfloor, in the Barbizon’s Rapunzel-like tower filled with studios for its buddingartists: in this soundproofed room with soaring ceilings Molly sang her arias,practicing for hours. The recital room, she noted, was where the resident artists andartists-to-be gave their concerts. The hotel’s Italianate lobby and mezzanine werewhere she played cards with friends. The oak-paneled library accommodated her book clubmeetings. (She most likely participated in meetings of the PegasusGroup, a literary cooperative that gathered at the Barbizon “to encourage theexpression of mental achievements by offering authors an opportunity to present theirworks before the public and to discuss them in an atmosphere of sane, fair andconstructive criticism.”) Men—all men other than registered doctors,plumbers, and electricians—were strictly