Chalif Normal School of Dancing Building

165 West 57th Street | Midtown | built 1916

The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

1916
Louis Chalif opens a dance-training academy across from Carnegie Hall
Ballet teacher Louis Chalif, who had emigrated from Odessa in 1904 and briefly served as assistant ballet master at the Metropolitan Opera, builds a five-story school after buying the lots in 1914. Architects G.A. and H. Boehm design the Italian Renaissance-style building with a grand ballroom, banquet hall, gymnasium, and an apartment for the Chalif family.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
1933
Chalif loses his school building after relocating to Rockefeller Center
Louis Chalif moves his dance academy to Rockefeller Center, and the West 57th Street building he built for it is lost to foreclosure by the Harlem Savings Bank the following year. Later tenants include a charity for the disabled and, from 1946, the music publisher Carl Fischer.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
1999
October 19
The city designates the former dance school a landmark
The Landmarks Preservation Commission designates 165 West 57th Street an individual landmark, citing its polychrome terra-cotta ornament and the fifth-floor marble loggia originally built for Louis Chalif's school. By then the building has long housed Columbia Artists Management's concert venue, CAMI Hall.
Source: Wikipedia

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