Art Students League Building

215 West 57th Street | also 217 West 57th Street | Midtown | built 1892

Open on the map9 entries

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

  1. 1890

    Painter Howard Russell Butler picks the West 57th Street site for the American Fine Arts Society

    The American Fine Arts Society, formed in 1889 by the Architectural League, the Society of American Artists and the Art Students League, bought six lots between Seventh Avenue and Broadway for $154,000. Painter and lawyer Howard Russell Butler chose the block for the north light it would give the fourth-floor painting studios. An architecture competition followed, and Henry Hardenbergh's design was chosen and unveiled in 1890.

    Source: 6sqft

  2. 1893

    February 13

    The Vanderbilt Gallery opens at the American Fine Arts Society

    The Vanderbilt Gallery, a skylit hall modeled on the Georges Petit Gallery in Paris, opened on February 13, 1893 behind the society's new building. George Washington Vanderbilt II had lent the society $100,000 to build its home and bought the lot behind it for a private gallery. Three weeks after the December 1892 opening he gave the gallery to the society, which wiped out his loan.

    “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.”

    Source: Wikipedia

  3. 1908

    June

    Georgia O'Keeffe studies at the Art Students League and wins its still-life scholarship

    At the Art Students League, O'Keeffe took classes from William Merritt Chase, F. Luis Mora and Kenyon Cox. In June 1908 she won the League's still-life scholarship for 1907-08, and as the winner she attended its summer outdoor school at Lake George, New York. That fall she left New York for Chicago to work as a freelance commercial artist.

    Source: okeeffemuseum.org

  4. 1920

    January 30

    A fire destroys the Vanderbilt Gallery and causes a $1 million loss at the Fine Arts Society

    On January 30, 1920, a severe fire damaged the American Fine Arts Society building and destroyed the original Vanderbilt Gallery. The loss was put at $1 million, about half of it the value of the artworks that burned. The society repaired the building and the rebuilt galleries reopened in March 1921. In the next two years the widening of 57th Street forced it to rebuild the main entrance and adjoining sidewalk.

    Source: Wikipedia

  5. 1930

    Jackson Pollock arrives in New York and studies under Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League

    Pollock moved east from his Western upbringing in 1930 and enrolled in classes at the Art Students League taught by the muralist Thomas Hart Benton. During the decade he held jobs on the WPA Federal Art Project and also worked in the studio of David Alfaro Siqueiros. His first solo exhibition came in 1943, and in 1945 he married the artist Lee Krasner and moved to Springs, on Long Island.

    Source: pkf.org

  6. 1943

    The Art Students League nearly closes in 1943 as wartime enrollment collapses

    By 1943 the war had cut the League's usual enrollment of about 1,000 students by more than 600, and the school was in danger of shutting down. Board of Control president Stewart Klonis told the New York Times that the school had always lived on tuition fees. The League raised funds and stayed open, and the Times wrote that year that the unendowed, member-governed school had earned the right to carry on.

    Source: gothamist.com

  7. 1968

    December 10

    The Landmarks Commission designates the American Fine Arts Society building a city landmark

    The Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the building on December 10, 1968. Its report calls it a town house in the French Renaissance manner of Francis I, formally balanced and restrained, with a richly decorated central section between plainer side walls, a balustrade with urns and a low red-tiled roof. The report adds that nearly all of the city's major fine arts exhibitions were held in the society's galleries until 1941.

    “The American Fine Arts Society building is a dignified adaptation of a Francis First, French Renaissance town house.”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  8. 1994

    The League finds sixty forgotten parody paintings in its basement

    In 1994 League staff discovered sixty paintings stored in the building's basement, where they had gone untouched for about eight decades. The works dated from 1891 to 1914 and were deliberate fakes, mock masterpieces that parodied the work of popular artists of the day. Two years later, asbestos removal in the building forced the League to move its summer classes to Carnegie Hall.

    “The League discovered sixty paintings in the basement in 1994, which had been created between 1891 and 1914 as "faux masterpieces" parodying popular artists' works…”

    Source: Wikipedia

  9. 2014

    February

    League members vote 1,342 to 227 to sell air rights for Central Park Tower's cantilever

    The League sold 136,000 square feet of air rights above its building to Extell for $23.1 million in 2006 and another 6,000 square feet for $31.8 million in 2013. Extell's Central Park Tower cantilevers 28 feet over the League's lot, starting about 300 feet up. Community Board 5 opposed it and the Landmarks Commission approved it in late 2013. Members backed the deal 1,342 to 227 in February 2014, and lawsuits to stop it were dismissed.

    Source: Wikipedia

Further reading

Nearby

All 178 buildings with stories in Midtown