| Rodin Studios | |
|---|---|
 | |
 Interactive map of Rodin Studios | |
| General information | |
| Type | Office |
| Architectural style | French Gothic |
| Location | 200 West 57th Street,Manhattan, New York, United States |
| Coordinates | 40°45′56″N73°58′50″W / 40.765427°N 73.980457°W /40.765427; -73.980457 |
| Groundbreaking | 1916 |
| Opened | 1917 |
| Owner | The Feil Organization |
| Height | |
| Architectural | 162 ft (49 m) |
| Roof | 152 ft (46 m) |
| Technical details | |
| Structural system | reinforced concrete |
| Floor count | 15 |
| Floor area | 135,051 square feet (12,546.6 m2) |
| Lifts/elevators | 3 |
| Design and construction | |
| Architect | Cass Gilbert |
| Designated | February 16, 1988[1] |
| Reference no. | 1571[1] |
TheRodin Studios, also known as200 West 57th Street, is an office building atSeventh Avenue and57th Street inMidtown Manhattan inNew York City. It was designed byCass Gilbert in theFrench Gothic style and built from 1916 to 1917. Named after French sculptorAuguste Rodin, the building is one of several inManhattan that were built in the early 20th century as both studios and residences for artists.
The Rodin Studios is 15 stories tall with asuperstructure made of reinforced concrete. The mainfacades are clad in polychromebuff and gray brick, and containFrench Renaissance-inspired trim made ofterracotta and iron. The brickwork of the facade contains both broad and narrowbays, while the northern side facing 57th Street contains large studio windows. The double-height studios, now subdivided, were mostly on the 57th Street side, while the smaller residences were at the back of the building.
The Rodin Studios was developed by the corporation of the same name, which operated the building until 1942. By the 1960s, the building was converted for office use. The Rodin Studios was designated a city landmark by theNew York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1988. The building was restored in 2008 by Zaskorski & Notaro Architects, and is owned byThe Feil Organization.
The Rodin Studios is on the southwestern corner of57th Street andSeventh Avenue, two blocks south ofCentral Park in theMidtown Manhattan neighborhood ofNew York City. It occupies the addresses 894–900 Seventh Avenue and 200 West 57th Street.[2] The site measures about 100 by 115 feet (30 by 35 m).[3][4]
The Rodin Studios abuts888 Seventh Avenue to the south and west; it facesthe Osborne to the north,The Briarcliffe to the northeast, andCarnegie Hall andCarnegie Hall Tower to the east. Other nearby buildings include theAmerican Fine Arts Society (also known as theArt Students League of New York building) andCentral Park Tower to the northwest;Alwyn Court and theLouis H. Chalif Normal School of Dancing to the northeast; and218 and224 West 57th Street to the west.[2] Right outside the building are entrances to theNew York City Subway's57th Street–Seventh Avenue station,[5] served by theN, Q, R, and W trains.[6]
The Rodin Studios is part of an artistic hub developed around the two blocks of West 57th Street fromSixth Avenue west toBroadway during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, following the opening of Carnegie Hall in 1891.[7][8] Several buildings in the area were constructed as residences for artists and musicians, such as130 and140 West 57th Street, the Osborne, and the Rodin Studios, as well as the demolishedSherwood Studios and Rembrandt. In addition, the area contained the headquarters of organizations such as the American Fine Arts Society, theLotos Club, and theAmerican Society of Civil Engineers at 218 West 57th Street.[9] The Rodin Studios' site was previously occupied by the Inverness, a seven-story brick-and-stone apartment building that had been developed in 1881.[10]
The Rodin Studios building was designed byCass Gilbert in theFrench Gothic style.[11][12] TheWells Construction Company was the general contractor,[13][14] whileHinkle Iron Works was the iron contractor.[15] The Federal Terra Cotta Company provided theterracotta, Harrison & Meyer constructed the cement floors and hallways, the W. G. Cornell Company was the plumbing and heating contractor, and the Barker Painting Company decorated the interior.[14] The building was developed by the corporation of the same name,[16][17] which in turn was named for the French sculptorAuguste Rodin.[10] The building's design was generally intended to complement the American Fine Arts Society building across 57th Street.[12][18]
The Rodin Studios contains 14 full stories as well as a partial 15th floor.[19] It is 162 feet (49 m) tall and has its main roof at 152 feet (46 m) above ground.[20] The Rodin Studios does not occupy its entire lot; rather, it is shaped like the letter "F". The northernfacade on 57th Street fills the entire 115-foot (35 m) length of the lot. On the eastern side of the building, a wing extends south along Seventh Avenue for about 92 feet (28 m), while at the center, a shorter wing extends south for about 76 feet (23 m).[21]
The Rodin Studios' facade is clad largely inbuff brick alternating with gray or burnt-gold highlights. It contains French Renaissance-inspired trim made of terracotta and iron, as well as ornamental brickwork.[12][22] The 57th Street and Seventh Avenueelevations, or sides, both contain alternating wide and narrow bays. The 57th Street side has five wide bays while the Seventh Avenue side has four.[23] The southern and western elevations containsash windows within a buff-brick facade. Only a small part of the western elevation is visible along 57th Street, as that wall faces another building.[22] At the southernmost end of the Seventh Avenue elevation, there is an ornate arched gateway, which is a service entrance to the ground-level restaurant there.[24] The ornamental detail includes screens over the studio windows, as well as carvings of animals and humangrotesques.[17][25]
At ground level, the main entrance is in the central bay on 57th Street. The other wide bays on 57th Street and Seventh Avenue have storefronts and the narrow bays contain gold-colored metal grilles.[26] There arecorbel tables above each of the ground-level wide bays as well as astring course above the third floor.[24]
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On the third through twelfth stories facing 57th Street, there are double-height window openings, designed to maximize sun exposure for artists.[17][21] These double-height openings are separated by Gothic style iron canopies.[27] Each of the wide bays contains five sash windows per floor, while the narrow bays have a single sash window on each floor. The center bay's double-height window openings are offset by one story, with single-height windows on the third and twelfth stories.[21] The windows on Seventh Avenue are smaller sash windows, arranged into rows more typical of those in other apartment buildings.[17][22] Each of the wide bays contains two separate sash windows per floor, while each narrow bay contains one sash window per floor, with some exceptions.[22]
The top two stories form the "cap" of the building, marked by afrieze and corbelcourse below the twelfth story.[28] The 57th Street side has double-height openings while the Seventh Avenue side has sash windows.[23] On the fourteenth story, there are decorative niches in each narrow bay, containing depictions ofmarmosets making different facial expressions. Thecornice above the fourteenth story consists of a decorative corbel table.[27]
According to the building's owner,The Feil Organization, the Rodin Studios has 135,051 square feet (12,546.6 m2) of floor area, or an average of 11,497 square feet (1,068.1 m2) of rentable area per floor. The building also has three elevators.[19] Gilbert planned the building with retail on the first floor, and offices on the second floor and part of the third floor.[10] The ground floor has abarrel-vaulted lobby, the only extant portion of Gilbert's interior design.[29]
The remainder of the building was dedicated to artists' studios in single-story simplex and double-storyduplex layouts, customized for each different resident's needs.[30][31] The simplex studios were in the rear wings, on the southern side of the building.[17][21] The duplex studios all faced north toward the double-height windows on 57th Street.[31] The smaller duplexes were in the center three bays, and the central bay was staggered so that each pair of studios in the three inner bays overlapped.[4][14][17] The duplexes in the outer bays, by contrast, were generally larger.[17] The duplexes had 22-foot (6.7 m) double-height ceilings, higher than the 16-foot (4.9 m) ceilings in traditional studios of the time,[32] and were 30 feet (9.1 m) deep.[14] Each unit had between three and eight rooms, with the living space on the lower floor and the bedrooms on the upper floor.[4] The double-height studios were subsequently infilled with intermediate floor slabs, subdividing the interior into single-height office floors.[17]
Cooperative apartment housing in New York City became popular in the late 19th century because of overcrowded housing conditions in the city's dense urban areas.[33] By the beginning of the 20th century, there were somehousing cooperatives in the city that catered specifically to artists, including at 130 and 140 West 57th Street, as well as on67th Street near Central Park.[34][35] However, these were almost always fully occupied.[36]
The Rodin Studios corporation was founded in 1916 by paintersLawton S. Parker,Georgia Timken Fry, andJohn Hemming Fry. The Frys were married and studied at theSt. Louis School of Fine Arts, where Parker later taught; all three had studied in Paris before moving to New York City.[16][17] The Frys moved to the city in 1902 and lived in numerous studio buildings, including in the nearbyGainsborough Studios from 1911 to 1918. During that time, John Fry became vice president of the Gainsborough Studios corporation, in which he learned about the operation of artists' cooperatives.[18] Parker and the Frys created the Rodin Studios because neither could find a satisfactory studio arrangement.[4] The Rodin Studios corporation decided to develop its studios on the site of the Inverness, which was close to 57th Street's artistic hub and to Carnegie Hall in particular, as well as being located on a major avenue.[4][10]
The first plans for the building were submitted by Cass Gilbert one or two days after the1916 Zoning Resolution was passed on July 25, 1916, because of an apparent misunderstanding about when the vote would take place; these plans were initially not recorded.[37] The Rodin Studios corporation acquired the site from Mary A. Chisholm in August 1916.[3] The next month, theMetropolitan Life Insurance Company loaned $700,000 (equivalent to $14,891,000 in 2024[a]) to the Rodin Studios corporation, while Georgia Fry provided a second mortgage of $200,000.[38][39][40] Gilbert revised the design several times based on suggestions from Parker and the Frys.[4] Gilbert submitted revised plans that November, and theNew York City Board of Estimate exempted the Rodin Studios from the new zoning law.[37] The building ultimately cost $1.4 million and was ready for occupancy by late 1917.[4]
Upon the building's completion, the Kelly-Springfield Tire Company leased the ground floor store and the basement.[41]New York Times advertisements from 1918 showed that the most ornate apartments went for at least $350 per month, equivalent to $7,317 in 2024.[b] Meanwhile, the Frys took four of the five apartments on the thirteenth and fourteenth floors, creating a 30-room studio.[4][17] The Rodin Studios corporation received a loan of $800,000 in May 1922, and Kelly-Springfield leased the ground-floor corner storefront and second floor.[42][43] The studios were not only occupied by artists; the1930 United States census indicated that the residents included bankers, cotton brokers, and railroad engineers.[17] The building's notable residents included artistBoris Anisfeld;[44] authorTheodore Dreiser, who lived there from 1926 to 1931;[45] and Ethel Traphagen Leigh, founder of the nearbyTraphagen School of Fashion.[46] Additionally,Johann Berthelsen operated a private school of voice in the Rodin Studios,[47] while architectJohn Eberson opened an office in the building in 1926.[48]
In 1942, the building was sold at auction to Joseph A. Hale for $800,500 to satisfy alien against the Rodin Studios corporation.[49] Two years later, in 1944, the Sipal Realty Corporation acquired the Rodin Studios.[29]
By the 1960s, the building was being used as offices.[c][17] The interiors were heavily modified; only the original lobby was left intact.[17] Sipal Realty, the building's owner through the late 1970s, also drastically changed the appearance of the storefronts, which were then restored by the subsequent owner.[29] The building's office tenants included theCareer Transition for Dancers.[50] TheNew York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) held hearings in 1986 during which it considered the Rodin Studios for city landmark status.[51] Two years later, on February 16, 1988, the LPC designated the Rodin Studios as a landmark.[1][52] The lobby was renovated around 1998.[19]
Until the 2000s, the Rodin Studios was owned by South African investorEddie Trump.[53] RCG Longview, a joint venture of Feil andRockpoint Group,[54] bought the building in February 2007 for $125.7 million.[55][56][d] Subsequently, architects Zaskorski & Notaro and engineers Robert Silman Associates were hired to restore the facade, replacing one-tenth of the terracotta.[58] By the 2010s, the building's tenants included medical and dental offices, law companies, film and television producers, and talent agencies.[59][58] In 2014, Feil and Rockpoint paid $120.4 million for a majority stake in the building's ownership.[57][54]
Christopher Gray ofThe New York Times wrote that the Rodin Studios was "one of the most elegant studio and apartment buildings in New York" and that the 57th Street facade was "a shimmering cascade of French Gothic ornament".[17]Architecture and Building magazine stated that the facade, "though very simple, has a decidedly decorative effect."[14] The magazineThe Art World called the Rodin Studios "strong yet graceful, solidly planted on the ground, yet lifting the mind of the observer upwards willy-nilly."[17]
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