American Fine Arts Society
The Art Students League of New York Building is a building on 57th Street in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. The structure, designed by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh in the French Renaissance style, was completed in December 1892 and serves as the headquarters of the Art Students League of New York. The building was developed by the American Fine Arts Society, formed in 1889 by five organizations including the Art Students League, the Society of American Artists, and the Architectural League of New York.
The Art Students League Building is five stories tall. Its primary facade along 57th Street is clad with limestone and contains ornate decoration. The rear is clad with brick faces 58th Street and is more simple in design. The building's interior contains meeting, classroom, and gallery space for the Art Students League; the space was previously divided among the AFAS's constituent organizations.
The Art Students League Building has been modified several times throughout its history, and it was repaired following major fires in 1901 and 1920. The building was used exclusively by the Art Students League by 1941, with the other organizations having moved out during the early 20th century. The Art Students League Building was designated as a New York City landmark in 1968 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. The building was renovated in 2003, and part of the adjacent Central Park Tower was constructed above it in the late 2010s.
Site
The Art Students League of New York Building is at 215 West 57th Street in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, just south of Central Park, between Seventh Avenue to the east and Broadway to the west. The building faces 57th Street to the south and 58th Street to the north. The rectangular site covers, with a frontage or lot-line length of on 57th and 58th Streets and a depth of between the two streets.The Art Students League Building shares the city block with the Osborne apartment building to the east, the Central Park Tower and 5 Columbus Circle to the west, and the Saint Thomas Choir School to the north. It also faces 224 West 57th Street to the southwest; 218 West 57th Street and 888 Seventh Avenue to the southeast; the Rodin Studios and Carnegie Hall to the southeast; and 200 and 220 Central Park South to the north.
The Art Students League Building is part of a former artistic hub around a two-block section of West 57th Street between Sixth Avenue and Broadway. The hub had been developed during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The hub was developed following the opening of Carnegie Hall in 1891. The area contains several buildings constructed as residences for artists and musicians, such as 130 and 140 West 57th Street, the Rodin Studios, and the Osborne Apartments. In addition, the area contained the headquarters of organizations such as the American Fine Arts Society, the Lotos Club, and the American Society of Civil Engineers. By the 21st century, the artistic hub had largely been replaced with Billionaires' Row, a series of luxury skyscrapers around the southern end of Central Park.
Architecture
The Art Students League Building at 215 West 57th Street was designed by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh in the French Renaissance style. The structure was built for the American Fine Arts Society, which was composed of the Society of American Artists, the Architectural League of New York, and the Art Students League of New York. Contemporary sources describe the design as being "of the epoch of Francis I". The building is five stories tall, although the 57th Street facade rises four stories and the 58th Street facade is three stories. A light court divides the wings on 57th and 58th Street. The building is topped by a mansard roof made of clay tiles.Facade
The facade on 57th Street is made of limestone. A small cornice runs above the ground story, while horizontal band courses run above the second and third stories. The main entrance is an ornate archway at the center of the ground story, which is flanked with stone balusters resembling candelabras. Three rectangular windows run along a sill on either side of the main entrance. At the second story, the three center windows are ornately decorated arches flanked by sculpted colonettes, while the two outer windows are small rectangular openings with ornate gables. At the third story, the three center windows contain stone mullion and transom bars, while the two outer windows are small rectangular windows with gables. There are three plaques in the band course directly above the center window openings, with the words "Painting", "Architecture", and "Sculpture". A large cornice and a balustrade run above the third-story band course. The top stories on 57th Street are hidden under the building's roof.The annex on 58th Street measures across. The Art Students League Building is set back from the 58th Street sidewalk. At ground level, there are slanted skylights between the 58th Street facade and the sidewalk, with a wrought-iron fence running along the sidewalk. The ground story of the 58th Street facade is made of buff-colored brick. There are entrance arches with ornate square porches on the extreme ends of this facade. The second and third stories are constructed in dark brick and contain blind double-height arches filled in with brick. The third story of the 58th Street facade is topped by a buff brick cornice with a corbel.
Interior
The entrance foyer has mosaic-tile floors, decorative oak-wood elements, architrave moldings, and transom windows with stained glass. As designed, the ground story was bisected by a hallway wide. There was space for the Society of American Architects to the right of the hallway, while the Art Students League and a staircase and elevator were to the left of the hallway. The Architectural League occupied the second floor, with a 100-seat lecture room, an art library, and a reading and committee room. The Art Students League used the rear of the second and third floor as classrooms, while the front portion of the third floor was used by the Art Students League's library and meeting room. The fourth story contained studios for the Art Students League, which were lit only by skylights. The fourth story was brightly lit by sunlight from the north, for the benefit of the artists working there, a consideration that impacted the selection of the AFAS building's site. The basement contained a supper room and the sculpture department. In the rear of the first floor was the Vanderbilt Gallery, a two-story annex built on a site, with a skylighted gallery based on the Georges Petit Gallery in Paris.As of 2018, an art-supply store occupies part of the ground floor. There is a fireplace with a large mantel in the second-floor gallery, which was created in the former lecture room space after World War II. The interior also contains two "half-floors" above the second and fourth stories. Many of the classrooms retain old furniture and designs from the early and mid-20th century. The New York Times wrote in 2014 that "Late-20th-century technology is not present, to say nothing of early 21st-century gadgets." The interior spaces are designed to accommodate the atelier system that the Art Students League uses for its classes, in which teachers devise their own curriculums.
History
Founding and construction
The American Fine Arts Society was incorporated in June 1889 by Howard Russell Butler, Louis C. Tiffany, Daniel C. French, Henry J. Hardenbergh, Edward H. Kendall, Frederic Crowninshield, Charles R. Lamb, Charles Broughton, Horace Bradley, Edwin Blashfield, Francis Jones, Chester Loomis, and J. Harrison Mills. The AFAS had been founded specifically to construct a building for the joint use of the artistic societies under its purview, and the idea for the building had been proposed specifically by Butler. The building had a construction budget of $200,000, to be funded through the sale of $50,000 in capital stock and the issuance of bonds. Some $20,000 in stock was to be raised through the Life Fellowship Fund, in which donors who contributed over $100 could be made "life fellows" of the AFAS. Life fellows were invited to all of the AFAS's private events and vote on management matters, and they also received five tickets to each show at the building.The AFAS's officers initially anticipated constructing the building on a lot along 43rd Street. By October 1889, over two hundred life fellowships had been distributed. The AFAS purchased several lots on 57th Street, just west of Seventh Avenue, in May 1890. By the following month, the AFAS had $30,000 on hand. Upon acquiring the land, the AFAS commenced an architectural design competition for the building's design. There were 31 entries for the competition, including two from Wilson Eyre and one each from H. Langford Warren and Babb, Cook & Willard. A jury, composed of Russell Sturgis, Daniel Chester French, and Henry Gurdon Marquand, was appointed to review the submissions. Although the original deadline for the plans was September 1890, the jury members could not agree on finalist candidates and William Morris Hunt joined the jury to break the impasse. The competition was narrowed to three finalists in November, and a tribunal selected Hardenbergh as architect the next month, along with Walter C. Hunting and John C. Jacobsen. At the time, the rear section facing 58th Street was planned to be built later.
Art collector George Washington Vanderbilt II, one of several major donors to the building's gift fund, bought the plot behind the AFAS to build his private Vanderbilt Gallery. By May 1891, construction of the AFAS building's foundation had begun. The AFAS had nearly completed fundraising, but needed to raise $50,000 for a gift fund for the building's maintenance. To fund construction, Vanderbilt agreed to extend the AFAS a $100,000 loan. Foundation work did not begin until that November. The cornerstone of the AFAS building was laid on February 8, 1892, with a celebration held at Carnegie Hall. The AFAS building was nearly completed by October, when members of the AFAS's constituent organizations began moving in. The building officially opened on December 3, 1892. Three weeks after the building's opening, Vanderbilt gifted the AFAS his private gallery, which had cost $100,000; this effectively forgave Vanderbilt's loan to the AFAS. The Vanderbilt Gallery opened on February 13, 1893. Butler said of the gallery, "No gift ever did so much for the art of this community."