Navarre Hotel Ladies Restaurant

Ad from the Bath [Maine] Independent,
March 5, 1910

Navarre Hotel Ladies Restaurant

Location: 7th Avenue at 38th Street, New York, New York, USA

Opened: Hotel opened in 1900, ladies restaurant probably didn't open till after 1907

Closed: Hotel demolished in 1930

The 1910 ad for the Navarre Hotel (to the right) appeared in Maine, but I imagine something similar appeared in newspapers all over the east coast.

Notice that a "Ladies Restaurant" is listed under the "Dutch Grill Rooms."

As we have pointed out in previous ladies restaurant posts, restaurants specifically designated for ladies were not unusual in turn-of-the century hotels. Chances are the "Dutch Grill Rooms" were designated as male-only, as cooking meat over an open flame is generally associated with men, masculinity, and men's space, and still is to some extent.

That is not to say that the "Ladies Restaurant" was female-only. Typically male escorts were not only allowed, they could even outnumber the ladies on occasion based on our analysis of other ladies restaurants from the period.

In many cases, the ladies restaurant was an after thought by the management. That also appears to be the case here. In this newspaper ad from 1907, there is mention of the "New Dutch Grill Rooms Largest in City," but no mention of a ladies restaurant.

As for the rest of the hotel...at Beyond the Guided Age, we're told that the building was designed by Barney & Chapman around 1900 and demolished in 1930.

We get a little more background from this contemporary description:

On the corner of Seventh Ave., at 38th St., is the NAVARRE HOTEL, most conveniently located. 300 ft. from Broadway. Constructed in the French Renaissance style of architecture, it is one of the handsomest structures of its kind, not only in this country. but in the world. It is built and maintained strictly fire-proof throughout, with its ten stately stories of steel construction, stone and brick walls, red-tiled roof and marble mosaic and terrazzo floors. Among many hostelries of a great city, the Navarre stands unique in this respect. It truly offers the maximum of comfort and luxury at minimum cost. Its richness and high-class appointments, while affording all that is attainable as to the substantial and elegant in hotel service, are to be enjoyed at rates reasonable beyond ordinary expectations.

Navarre Hotel Main Lobby

The colored postcard above accompanied this description. And in this postcard, which appears to be from the 1920s, there is mention of the "Most Artistic Grill Rooms and Restaurants in the City," but no specific mention of a ladies restaurant, so I suspect it was gone by then.

Judging by the few images we have of the interior, this hotel was as beautiful on the inside as it was on the outside. Unfortunately, we have no images of the ladies restaurant. And I don't find any images from the time of the (men's) grill room either. However, you can see an artist's rendition of what the Navarre Hotel "Gentleman's Café and Bar" looked like here.

Women-only hotel floors in Denmark

Bella Skye Hotel

Women-only hotel floors

Location: Denmark

Opened: Spring 2011

Closed: Spring 2014

Well, it seems that men's rights advocates and their allies are even opposed to something as innocuous as pink hotel rooms for women travelers. The whole matter may seem rather silly on the surface, but they took it seriously enough to file a lawsuit. Which just goes to show you, even with all the problems in this world, how deeply intimidated and threatened they are about womyn's space. Any womyn's space.

Even if it's just a bunch of corporate women travelers temporarily congregating on the same hotel floor. Even if the same men don't want or don't need large hairdryers. Even if the hotel offers "ladies style" rooms for men elsewhere. Even if up until now, no men had expressed any interest whatsoever in staying on the ladies floor.

Doesn't matter. It still must be stopped! (By the way, last time I checked, there were NO lesbian bars remaining in Denmark. But there were plenty of bars and events that continued to cater to gay men exclusively.) But never mind all that.

And never mind that this has nothing to do with the objections that 2nd-wave feminists initially raised about men-only spaces. The only reason they had any concern at all is that many of these spaces were important centers of power, where important business and political decisions were made, and women were being locked out. Otherwise, I don't know any feminists who insist of crashing all-male hunting parties or other meaningless male gatherings. But notice that the attitudes do NOT go the other way.

From CNBC:

Women-only hotel floor ruled illegal, discriminatory
Harriet Baskas, Special to CNBC
Wednesday, 30 Apr 2014 | 8:51 AM ET

An anti-discrimination ruling by a Danish court may put a crimp in a trend toward women-only hotel floors that offer extra security along with amenities such as large hair driers, complimentary nylons and extra dress hangers.

"We had no idea this product could be remotely illegal," Allan Agerholm, CEO of the company that owns Bella Sky Hotel, told CNBC. "It is a business product we created to differentiate our hotel from others. This is a petty case that should have never been brought. It detracts from real discrimination issues happening in our society."

On Friday, a court ruled that even though the hotel had two ladies-style rooms elsewhere in the hotel bookable by men, the women's-only floor was indeed discriminatory. The hotel has opted to keep the room setups, but open them to anyone. (my emphasis)



Bella Donna room, Bella Sky Hotel

"If for some reason a male guest should find it interesting to stay there in the pink environment, they are welcome to do so," said Agerholm. (my emphasis)

When the 812-room, two-tower hotel opened in spring 2011, the 20 upgraded rooms on the secure-access "Bella Donna" floor were set aside for women only, with feminine touches and amenities ranging from large dressing mirrors to a minibar stocked with smoothies, wine and high quality chocolate.

Rooms on the Bella Donna floor have an upgrade fee of about $28, with occupancy there running slighter higher than the rest of the hotel, said Agerholm.

Shortly after the hotel opened, two men complained about the women-only floor to the Danish Board of Equal Treatment, which ruled the floor was gender discriminatory and illegal. Because the board had no authority to sanction, Bella Sky kept the Bella Donna floor intact and appealed to the Eastern High Court in Copenhagen.

While not very common, some hotels in the United States and elsewhere continue to offer women-only floors, including the Hamilton Crowne Plaza in Washington, D.C., and the Crowne Plaza in Bloomington, Minn.

"Our ladies floor, where we charge a $20 premium, is usually 85 percent occupied or sold out Monday through Thursday and is very popular with female corporate travelers," Charlie LaMont, general manager of the Crowne Plaza Bloomington, told CNBC. "Some like the amenities, but for most, it's the security of the secure-access floor," he said.

The 10 rooms on the 10th floor of the 127-room Ellis Hotel in downtown Atlanta are set aside for women. In addition to private-access entry, the rooms include upgraded amenities, slippers and use of curling iron and a flat iron.

The hotel charges an added fee of $20 for the rooms, "which are most popular with the female corporate traveler," said Tom LaVaccare, director of sales and marketing. "It's a privacy issue, not necessarily a security issue," he said, "but we're working on adding more amenities."

LaVacarre said no male customer has ever complained about being excluded but "if they wanted to be on a floor just for men, we could accommodate that." (my emphasis)

For several years, the Georgian Court Hotel in Vancouver, British Columbia, has offered 18 Orchid Rooms on a "women-preferred" floor with amenities such as curling irons, flat irons, high-powered hair driers, upgraded Aveda products, satin-padded hangers, nylons and other items at no extra charge.
 

The rooms were so popular that the hotel recently added a second floor of rooms with the same amenities, and men aren't excluded from those floors, they rarely book there, General Manager Lisa Jackson said. (my emphasis)

 

The Onondaga Hotel Ladies Restaurant

from the Syracuse Herald, November 25, 1911

The Onondaga Hotel Ladies Restaurant

Location: East Jefferson Street, Syracuse, New York, USA

Opened: Hotel opened August 1910

Closed: Officially closed April 1969; torn down in 1970

Back in the early years of the twentieth century, the Onondaga was one of the more prestigious hotels in upstate New York. And as we see from an advertisement from 1911, it was very much an old boys' place.

In fact, this ad beautifully illustrates how marginalized the women's space tends to be in the greater scheme of things. Specifically, how minor and compromised the so-called "ladies restaurant" is in contrast to the male-only spaces of an upper-class hotel.

First observe the clubby, confidential tone of the ad narrative, and how it's very much man-to-man. And also how the space at this hotel is carefully framed as a facility catering to wealthy men and their personal and economic interests:

Said a banker: "Many times of a forenoon do I try to reach a business man in his office, and fail. How often, however, do I find him and others at the lunch hour at The Onondaga. The advantage that one enjoys additional to a good meal, in finding the people you want to meet is a convenience not to be underrated."

The Onondaga Hotel - Syracuse, New York

Men are apparently synonymous with "people" and vice versa. To continue:

That's it--Saves time--Promotes friendly intercourse with the very men you might otherwise seldom see. The hotel is a rendezvous of the business man, the the man of affairs and the man about town. It may well be styled "The Down Town Club." If you fail to find the man you want in the lobby or Men's Cafe--try the Ratskeller.

Notice the prominent mention of male-only space (the Men's Cafe). Though you can almost bet the Ratskeller was also exclusively male. And that "unescorted" ladies were not welcome in the lobby area either, especially if they had the temerity to "linger." This was standard modus operandi for a hotel of this era.

So far no sign of women anywhere in this text. But notice how the ladies are suddenly introduced into the discussion:

Or tonight he may be in the the ladies' restaurant with his wife--for she likes to come as well as he--this is not a hotel for men alone--it's

HEADQUARTERS FOR EVERYBODY AND EVERYTHING WORTHWHILE.

This is a theme we have seen many times before. The men's areas are strictly that--bonding areas for ambitious businessmen. 

But in addition the so-called ladies areas are also thoroughly colonized for the same purpose. Not only are the men apparently present in the (so-called) ladies cafe in abundance, the men seemingly can't help but project and insert the same old male-oriented agenda.

And yet we see this hotel called--in a totally faux interpretation of equality--a "headquarters for everybody." Obviously, this is nothing but horse patootie.

The evidence we see here of men taking over a women's space, and making it there own is a theme we have seen many times in the history of turn-of-the-century ladies restaurants, cafes, and dining rooms.

As early as 1885 we see a New York woman complaining about male domination within so-called ladies restaurants:

True, almost every respectable restaurant bears the sign "ladies' restaurant up stairs" but upon entering we find the room filled with men, and we meekly subside into whatever vacant space we are allotted, running the gauntlet thereto between the domineering, quizzical or supercilious eyes of the nabobs, who glare at us as if we had invaded their domain instead of they ours, and for all this we are allowed to pay double the price charged in a regular business man's eating house.

A previous post on the ladies' cafe at Chicago's Hotel Bismarck provides the visual evidence. The postcards illustrate that the men's space are strictly that. By contrast, men are to found at nearly every table in the ladies' cafe.

Needless to say, remnants of this attitude live on as women's shelters, bars, and other institutions are roundly denounced (or even threatened) for attempting to even restrict the presence of men. While male-only institutions are vigilantly defended and enforced as off-limits.

Monongahela House Ladies Restaurant

From the Indiana Democrat,
June 15, 1910

Monongahela House Ladies Restaurant

Location: Corner of Smithfield and Water Streets (now
known as Fort Pitt Boulevard), Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

Opened: Hotel originally built in 1840; rebuilt in 1847 after it was destroyed during Pittsburgh's Great Fire of 1845

Closed: Hotel was razed in 1935

The Mongahela House has a long and glorious history with many esteemed guests. But I'm not going to go into all that here.

For our purposes, I just want to call your attention to the Ladies Restaurant, which is mentioned in the 1910 advertisement reproduced above.

Monongahela House (1935)

What is remarkable here, is that in an ad praising the many virtues of the Monoghahela House ("World renowned, centrally located, large airy rooms") we discover that there was a Ladies Restaurant that was actually on the first floor!

Regular Lost readers will probably recognize how rare this actually was. The vast majority of Ladies Restaurants were squeezed into maginal commercial space--typically the second floor, though sometimes the basement. At any rate, they were virtually never accorded prime square footage on the first floor where the (higher value) Gentlemen's Cafe, Dining Room, or Grill were located.

The Ladies Restaurant probably dates to 1907, when "the Monon" was remodeled. A 1908 book on Pittsburgh tells us the following about the Ladies Restaurant:

The ladies' parlours and ladies' and gentlemen's restaurants on the first floor are models of exquisite taste and rare beauty, while the scenery along the river front, looking toward Mount Washington across the waters of the sweeping Monongahela, is indeed one of picturesque beauty.

Hotel Seneca Ladies Dining Room

Ladies Dining Room, Hotel Seneca



Hotel Seneca Ladies Dining Room

Location: Clinton Avenue, Rochester, New York, USA

Opened: 1908

Closed: Hotel became Manger Hotel in 1957, building razed in 1969

Hotel Seneca

The Rochester Subway blog tells us a little about the Seneca Hotel itself, and specifically quotes a New York Times story on the hotel's opening on September 14, 1908.

Although the hotel's lobby was described in some detail, little was said about the hotel's many dining rooms:

The decoration of the spacious lobby follows the Renaissance style, with wainscoting of French marble, wall panels of greenish brown, ivory columns with Oriental caps in dull old gold, and ceilings suggestive of old illuminated Spanish leather book covers. Cornices and brackets are in old gold. Throughout the entire ground floor, in the various dining rooms and buffets, elaborate and rich decorative schemes are carried out.

Main Office and Lobby, Hotel Seneca

And to think this beautiful place was demolished....Ah well, at least we can imagine having tea with our lady friends in the exquisite ladies dining room. More crumpets, darling?

Hotel Gorley Ladies Dining Room

Gorley's Lake Hotel (c. 1915-1930)

Hotel Gorley Ladies Dining Room

Location: Uniontown, Pennsylvania, USA

Opened: April 1908

Closed: Hotel closed in July 1957, when sold to the Society of Brothers

The Uniontown Morning Herald announced the opening of what was apparently first called the "Hotel Gorley" on April 3, 1908. Like many of the fine lakeside resorts of that era, it featured separate dining rooms for the ladies and the gentlemen. Here is how the described the ladies dining room, which (naturally!) was on the second floor--the typical location of ladies dining rooms, restaurants, dining rooms, and the like:

Gorley's Hotel

The ladies' dining room is on the second floor. It is a dream. No expense was spared to make this room  one of the brightest spots in the house. The walls are beautifully decorated with tapestry hangings that match window curtains of the finest materials. The floor is covered with a beautifully designed velvet brussels carpet. The chandeliers are of the most beautiful designs and are connected up with both electricity and natural gas.

Gorley's Lake Hotel

Unfortunately, some of the pages of this issue are no longer readily available, so the descriptions are abruptly cut off. So all we're told about the gent's area is the following: "Men's Dining Room to be Presided Over by a Pittsburg Expert."

The hotel's 21 rooms, we're assured, were "handsomely furnished"--though only six of the 21 rooms had "private bath rooms":

White enameled iron beds, with coverings as white as snow. Mahogany is the material used in the furniture of each room. Hot and cold flowing water is provided in stationary wash stands. The carpets on the floor are of the finest quality of brussels, while the walls and ceilings of each room are finished in colors that match the floor coverings.

Sounds so romantic....

A History of Uniontown tells us that Charles H. Gorley built this four-story brick hotel in 1907: "He ran this as a restaurant from April 4, 1908, as Hotel Gorley for a short time, but failing to secure a hotel license, he closed the place."

The evidence is not altogether clear, but it appears that at some point the hotel was acquired by new owners and significantly expanded. A 1927 ad in the Jewish Criterion describes a much bigger and grander place than the Gorley Hotel from 1908--assuming this is the same place:

GORLEY'S LAKE HOTEL

75 Miles from Pitt:()urgh
Mountains Are Calling—Beautiful
and Picturesque—A Tonic for
the Tired Mind and Body
This popular summer resort offering you more pastime than any hotel on the National Highway. A resort hotel for discriminating guests. You are making no mistake in spending your vacation here. Hotel is New and Modern with 100 Rooms and Baths and Beach Bathing,
Boating, Dancing
11 Miles East of Uniontown,  Pa.

Time Magazine actually reported on the closing of Gorley's Lake Hotel in July 1957, when it was sold to the Society of Brothers--what Time described as "an obscure religious sect." Presumably the ladies dining room was long gone by then: 

It was a big night at Gorley's Lake Hotel. All four bars were going full blast, and some 500 revelers milled happily about the ivy-grown Allegheny Mountain resort near Uniontown, Pa. Some of them went in for a moonlight dip from the concrete bathing pavilion, and it was 4 a.m. before things quieted down; the management even set up a few drinks on the house all around—a flagrant violation of Pennsylvania liquor laws. But the 34-year-old hotel would not be needing its liquor license any more..

Hotel Rideau

Hotel Rideau, Smith Falls, Ontario (1910)

Hotel Rideau

Location: Main Street, Smith Falls, Ontario, Canada (or perhaps Jarvis Street in Toronto?)

Opened/Closed: "Ladies and Escorts Rooms" identified as lesbian space during the 1950s 

I'm a little perplexed as to whether I have the right Hotel Rideau (or Rideau Hotel) here. Historian Elise Chenier discusses the Rideau Hotel within the context of Jarvis Street in Toronto.

But there apparently never was a Rideau Hotel on Jarvis Street. Could she mean the Hotel Rideau in Smith Falls, Ontario?

At any rate, Chenier's description of the Rideau Hotel is a very exciting find for me.

I have long kept the definition of "womyn's space" pretty loose here, partly from a hunch I had that even the most conservative, upper-class, religious, or seemingly heterosexual women's space ultimately had significance in terms of women's autonomy--even if that wasn't its expressed intent.

In that spirit, I have posted on all kinds of ladies parlors, ladies cafes, ladies restaurants, ladies writing rooms, and other similarly segregated spaces that used to exist in conjuction with public spaces designed and operated largely for men, such as hotels. I had a feeling that these kinds of rooms, no matter how compromised, still created some kind of opening for women to form friendships, and yes, even intimate relationships and erotic connections with one another.

But I had no real proof of that.

Till now! From "Rethinking Class in Lesbian Bar Culture: Living 'The Gay Life' in Toronto, 1955-1965":

Up until the mid-1950s, lesbians were most likely to be found in public houses along Jarvis Street. The Rideau Hotel was one of the more popular, perhaps because it had one of the few remaining "ladies only" rooms. In an effort to prevent sexual immorality (and appease temperance advocates), Ontario liquor licensing laws required that public houses thwart heterosexual contact between strangers by providing at least two physically separate rooms: one for men only, and the other for women. Up until the early 1970s when feminists launched a successful campaign against such forms of segregation, men could gain access to what were called "ladies and escorts rooms" only by entering with a woman. The Rideau's "women only" room made it particularly well suited to

gay women's social needs. Not only did it allow them space to socialize with each other, but it also shielded them from heterosexual advances and male antagonism.


Here we see the Law of Unintended Consequences working two ways.

One, when religious temperance crusaders pushed for the creation of ladies salons, their intent was to  protect women's virtue by restricting their access to men and men's access to them. In time, what they actually did was carve out public space where lesbians could find each other with minimal male harrassment.

Two, when 1970s feminists railed against sex discrimination in public accomodations, they (inadvertently?) destroyed--or at least deeply compromised--the ability of lesbians to legally gather in a public space without the presence of men.

Lesson? Be very careful what policies you advocate for and who you define as your political allies.

La Provence, Marrot Hotel

Marrot Hotel

La Provence, Marrot Hotel

Location: 2625 North Meridian Street, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA

Opened: In 1926 as residential hotel "for persons of distinction." La Provence, the "woman-only" bar, opened in 1953.

Closed: Hotel still open, though now doing business as Marrot Apartments. No evidence that La Provence is still open.

Here is the (condescending) notice in the Milwaukee Journal announcing the opening of La Provence on November 6, 1953:

Who Buys the Drinks in Women Only Bar?

Indianapolis, Ind. (AP) The Marrot, a fashionable hotel, announced Thursday that it would soon open a bar for women only.

Men can get into the gold and turquoise La Provence only if they are escorting a woman.

There is an added gimmick. The women may keep the fancy decanters if their order empties the bottle.

The story was also picked up by the Chicago Tribune (pay per view) and the Modesto Bee.

The comparatively late date on this story is astonishing. Had a hotel opened a "ladies only" bar some forty years earlier, nobody would have batted an eye. The "ladies-only" bar would have been seen as a more-or-less innocent complement to the men-only drinking establishments and nothing more. But by the early 1950s, it's hard to fathom that a woman-only bar could still be treated in the press as an amusing novelty, and not as something "tainted" by the possibility of lesbianism or "sexual perversion." Gay and lesbian historians have generally argued that the 1950s were the worst time for gay people, especially lesbians, who, to some extent, had been able to sail under the social radar until the Second World War or so. But by the early 1950s, neo-Freudian psychoanalysts, in cahoots with government officials, were "diagnosing" lesbianism everywhere. Women, perhaps more so than men, were being hounded out of federal and state jobs due to the witch hunts instigated by Joseph McCarthy and his political allies. McCarthy wasn't officially censured by the Senate till 1954, but the paranoid social policies he initiated lived on for many years afterwards.

So how did we come up with La Provence, an apparent throwback to another era? Your guess is as good as mine.

Ladies Parlour, Sheridan Inn

Ladies Parlour, Sheridan Inn (early photo)

Ladies Parlour, Sheridan Inn

Location: 856 Broadway, Sheridan, Wyoming, USA

Opened: Construction begun in December 1892, opened May 27, 1893

Closed: First floor remains open, including the former ladies parlour, for meetings, dinners, and receptions. Upper floors in need of restoration. As of this year (April), the hotel was in danger of foreclosure.

Sheridan Inn (2008)

The Sheridan Inn has a long and colorful history, beginning with its two-year association with "Buffalo Bill" Cody. The hotel was designed by Nebraska architect Thomas R. Kimball, based on the hotels of Scotland. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1966. Read more about its history here.

Georgia O'Keeffe, Ram's Head White
Hollyhock and Little Hills (1935)

What I find fascinating is the contrast between the traditional Scottish exterior, and the very spare western aesthetic in the ladies parlour. Nearly all the hotel spaces I have ever seen that have been designated for "ladies" or "women" have had been steeped in the European design tradition. Not this one. It looks like we're stepping into a Georgia O'Keeffe canvas. I have been unable to establish who did the interior design.

Ladies Parlour - after 1969?

Yet in this photo, the "ladies parlour" is set up as a rather dull and conventional Victorian dining room. If we are to judge from a photo taken during a dinner that was held there, this layout was associated with a later renovation--probably the 1969 restoration of the ladies parlour, dining room, and Wyoming Room. In addition, if you examine the first photo carefully, you'll see--despite efforts to "old up" the appearance--that there are modern pictures on the wall, newer air vents, and what appears to be recessed ceiling lights.

Given all the male diners, this was clearly not a womyn's space by this time. That's hardly a surprise though. We know from past research that nearly all lady-designated dining spaces of the late nineteenth century were constantly infested with male "escorts" and the like, who not infrequently outnumbered the women. In addition, ladies cafes, restaurants and the like often doubled as small banquet facilities for men and women. So they never had a very stable or consistent function, unlike, say, the men's smoking room or the men's grill.