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54-752: The Rodin Studios , also known as 200 West 57th Street , is an office building at Seventh Avenue and 57th Street in Midtown Manhattan in New York City . It was designed by Cass Gilbert in the French Gothic style and built from 1916 to 1917. Named after French sculptor Auguste Rodin , the building is one of several in Manhattan that were built in the early 20th century as both studios and residences for artists. The Rodin Studios

108-706: A full academician in 1908. Gilbert served as president of the academy from 1926 to 1933. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1934. He was a trustee of the Carnegie Institution from 1924 until he died in 1934. Gilbert was a skyscraper pioneer; when designing the Woolworth Building he moved into unproven ground — though he certainly was aware of the ground-breaking work done by Chicago architects on skyscrapers and once discussed merging firms with

162-495: A loan of $ 800,000 in May 1922, and Kelly-Springfield leased the ground-floor corner storefront and second floor. The studios were not only occupied by artists; the 1930 United States Census indicated that the residents included bankers, cotton brokers, and railroad engineers. The building's notable residents included artist Boris Anisfeld ; author Theodore Dreiser , who lived there from 1926 to 1931; and Ethel Traphagen Leigh, founder of

216-627: A major avenue. The first plans for the building were submitted by Cass Gilbert one or two days after the 1916 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. The Rodin Studios corporation acquired the site from Mary A. Chisholm in August 1916. The next month, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company loaned $ 700,000 (equivalent to $ 14,510,000 in 2023) to

270-418: A partial 15th floor. It is 162 feet (49 m) tall and has its main roof at 152 feet (46 m) above ground. The Rodin Studios does not occupy its entire lot; rather, it is shaped like the letter "F". The northern facade 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

324-576: A world fashion capital. The first, temporary signs designating the section of Seventh Avenue as "Fashion Avenue" were dual-posted in 1972, with permanent signs added over the ensuing years. Seventh Avenue intersects with Broadway and with 42nd Street at Times Square , with multiple buildings at the intersections. Notable buildings located on Seventh Avenue include: Notable buildings on Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard , from Central Park north through Harlem , include: Notes Cass Gilbert Cass Gilbert (November 24, 1859 – May 17, 1934)

378-481: Is 15 stories tall with a superstructure made of reinforced concrete. The main facades are clad in polychrome buff and gray brick, and contain French Renaissance -inspired trim made of terracotta and iron. The brickwork of the facade contains both broad and narrow bays , while the northern side facing 57th Street contains large studio windows. The double-height studios, now subdivided, were mostly on

432-574: Is a major thoroughfare in the West Village . The now dismantled St. Vincent's Hospital was a main downtown hospital on Seventh Avenue and 11th Street. Running through the Garment District (which stretches from 12th Avenue to 5th Avenue and 34th Street to 39th Street), it is referred to as Fashion Avenue due to its role as a center of the garment and fashion industry and the famed fashion designers who established New York as

486-493: Is after all only a skyscraper." Gilbert's two buildings on the University of Texas at Austin campus, Sutton Hall (1918) and Battle Hall (1911), are recognized by architectural historians as among the finest works of architecture in the state. Designed in a Spanish-Mediterranean revival style, the two buildings became the stylistic basis for the later expansion of the university in the 1920s and 1930s and helped popularize

540-498: Is called Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard. Addresses continue as if the street was continuous through Central Park, with the first block north of the park being the 1800 block. The United States Postal Service delivers mail using either street name. As is the case with " Sixth Avenue " and " Avenue of the Americas ", long-time New Yorkers continue to use the older name. The street has two northern termini; an upper level terminates at

594-404: Is owned by The Feil Organization . The Rodin Studios is on the southwestern corner of 57th Street and Seventh Avenue , two blocks south of Central Park in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City . It occupies the addresses 894–900 Seventh Avenue and 200 West 57th Street. The site measures about 100 by 115 feet (30 by 35 m). The Rodin Studios abuts 888 Seventh Avenue to

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648-481: The B , ​ D ​, and E trains. North of the park, Powell Boulevard is served by the Harlem–148th Street on the 3 train, and the 155th Street station on the B and ​ D trains. It is also served by numerous local MTA New York City Bus routes downtown, with uptown buses on 8th Avenue unless specified below: South of 14th Street Seventh Avenue

702-828: The University of Texas at Austin , state capitols in Minnesota and West Virginia, the support towers of the George Washington Bridge , railroad stations (including the New Haven Union Station , 1920), and the United States Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C. His reputation declined among some professionals during the age of Modernism , but he was on the design committee that guided and eventually approved

756-512: The West Village at Clarkson Street, where Varick Street becomes Seventh Avenue South (which becomes Seventh Avenue proper after the road crosses Greenwich Avenue and West 11th Street ). It is interrupted by Central Park from 59th to 110th Street . Artisans' Gate is the 59th Street exit from Central Park to Seventh Avenue. North of Warriors' Gate at the north end of the Park, the avenue carries traffic in both directions through Harlem , where it

810-530: The 20th century. It was extended southward, as Seventh Avenue South, to link up with Varick Street in 1914, and Varick was widened at the same time. Extension of the avenue allowed better vehicular connections between midtown Manhattan and the commercial district in what is now TriBeCa . It also permitted construction of the New York City Subway IRT Broadway ;– Seventh Avenue Line which opened in 1918. Extension of

864-491: The 57th Street facade was "a shimmering cascade of French Gothic ornament". Architecture and Building magazine stated that the facade, "though very simple, has a decidedly decorative effect." The magazine The Art World called the Rodin Studios "strong yet graceful, solidly planted on the ground, yet lifting the mind of the observer upwards willy-nilly." Seventh Avenue (Manhattan) Seventh Avenue originates in

918-550: 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 the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1988. The building was restored in 2008 by Zaskorski & Notaro Architects, and

972-592: The Gainsborough Studios corporation, in which he learned about the operation of artists' cooperatives. Parker and the Frys created the Rodin Studios because neither could find a satisfactory studio arrangement. 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

1026-717: The Minnesota capitol gave Gilbert his national reputation and in 1898 he permanently moved his base to New York. His breakthrough commission was the design of the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House in New York City, which now houses the George Gustav Heye Center . Gilbert served on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts from 1910 to 1916. In 1906 he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an associate member, and became

1080-483: The Rodin Studios corporation, while Georgia Fry provided a second mortgage of $ 200,000. Gilbert revised the design several times based on suggestions from Parker and the Frys. Gilbert submitted revised plans that November, and the New York City Board of Estimate exempted the Rodin Studios from the new zoning law. The building ultimately cost $ 1.4 million and was ready for occupancy by late 1917. Upon

1134-596: The Rodin Studios for city landmark status. Two years later, on February 16, 1988, the LPC designated the Rodin Studios as a landmark. The lobby was renovated around 1998. Until the 2000s, the Rodin Studios was owned by South African investor Eddie Trump . RCG Longview, a joint venture of Feil and Rockpoint Group , bought the building in February 2007 for $ 125.7 million. Subsequently, architects Zaskorski & Notaro and engineers Robert Silman Associates were hired to restore

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1188-436: The Rodin Studios has 135,051 square feet (12,546.6 m) of floor area, or an average of 11,497 square feet (1,068.1 m) of rentable area per floor. The building also has three elevators. Gilbert planned the building with retail on the first floor, and offices on the second floor and part of the third floor. The ground floor has a barrel-vaulted lobby, the only extant portion of Gilbert's interior design. The remainder of

1242-573: The Rodin Studios. By the 1960s, the building was being used as offices. The interiors were heavily modified; only the original lobby was left intact. 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. The building's office tenants included the Career Transition for Dancers . The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) held hearings in 1986 during which it considered

1296-496: The Seventh Avenue side has four. The southern and western elevations contain sash 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. 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. The ornamental detail includes screens over

1350-636: The age of modernism, but has since rebounded because of "respect for the integrity and classic beauty of his masterworks". Gilbert was born in Zanesville, Ohio , the middle of three sons, and was named after the statesman Lewis Cass , to whom he was distantly related. Gilbert's father General Samuel A. Gilbert was a Union veteran of the American Civil War and a surveyor for the United States Coast Survey . His uncle

1404-596: The architecture program at MIT . Gilbert worked for a time with the firm of McKim, Mead & White before starting a practice in St. Paul with James Knox Taylor . He was commissioned to design a number of railroad stations, including those in Anoka , Willmar and the extant Little Falls depot , all in Minnesota. As a Minnesota architect he was best known for his design of the Minnesota State Capitol and

1458-458: The avenue was under consideration for several years, and was approved by the New York City Board of Estimate in September 1911, when the first $ 3 million appropriation was made for the initial planning of the work. The extension had been urged by civic groups to meet the commercial needs of Greenwich Village. A significant number of old buildings were marked for demolition in the extension, and

1512-437: The building was dedicated to artists' studios in single-story simplex and double-story duplex layouts, customized for each different resident's needs. The simplex studios were in the rear wings, on the southern side of the building. The duplex studios all faced north toward the double-height windows on 57th Street. The smaller duplexes were in the center three bays, and the central bay was staggered so that each pair of studios in

1566-503: The building's completion, the Kelly-Springfield Tire Company leased the ground floor store and the basement. New York Times advertisements from 1918 showed that the most ornate apartments went for at least $ 350 per month, equivalent to $ 7,090 in 2023. Meanwhile, the Frys took four of the five apartments on the thirteenth and fourteenth floors, creating a 30-room studio. The Rodin Studios corporation received

1620-667: The cement floors and hallways, the W. G. Cornell Company was the plumbing and heating contractor, and the Barker Painting Company decorated the interior. The building was developed by the corporation of the same name, which in turn was named for the French sculptor Auguste Rodin . The building's design was generally intended to complement the American Fine Arts Society building across 57th Street. The Rodin Studios contains 14 full stories as well as

1674-438: The center, a shorter wing extends south for about 76 feet (23 m). The Rodin Studios' facade is clad largely in buff brick alternating with gray or burnt-gold highlights. It contains French Renaissance-inspired trim made of terracotta and iron, as well as ornamental brickwork. The 57th Street and Seventh Avenue elevations , or sides, both contain alternating wide and narrow bays. The 57th Street side has five wide bays while

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1728-628: The demolished buildings included the Bedford Street Methodist Church, constructed in 1840. Most of Seventh Avenue has carried traffic one-way southbound since June 6, 1954. The portion north of Times Square carried two-way traffic until March 10, 1957. Seventh Avenue is served by the 1 , ​ 2 , and ​ 3 trains for most of its length, with N , ​ Q , ​ R , and ​ W service between 42nd Street and Central Park South . The Seventh Avenue station also serves

1782-424: The downtown St. Paul Endicott Building . His goal was to move to New York City and gain a national reputation, but he remained in Minnesota from 1882 until 1898. Many of his Minnesota buildings are still standing, including more than a dozen private residences (especially those on St. Paul's Summit Avenue ), several churches featuring rich textures and colors, resort summer homes, and warehouses. The completion of

1836-506: The facade, replacing one-tenth of the terracotta. By the 2010s, the building's tenants included medical and dental offices, law companies, film and television producers, and talent agencies. In 2014, Feil and Rockpoint paid $ 120.4 million for a majority stake in the building's ownership. Christopher Gray of The New York Times wrote that the Rodin Studios was "one of the most elegant studio and apartment buildings in New York" and that

1890-509: The interior into single-height office floors. 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. By the beginning of the 20th century, there were some housing cooperatives in the city that catered specifically to artists, including at 130 and 140 West 57th Street, as well as on 67th Street near Central Park. However, these were almost always fully occupied. The Rodin Studios corporation

1944-618: The large federal buildings along the National Mall in Washington, D.C., which he disliked. Architectural historian Margaret Heilbrun said that "Gilbert's pioneering buildings injected vitality into skyscraper design, and his 'Gothic skyscraper,' epitomized by the Woolworth Building, profoundly influenced architects during the first decades of the twentieth century." Historians Christen and Flanders wrote that his reputation among architectural critics went into eclipse during

1998-554: The legendary Daniel Burnham — and his technique of cladding a steel frame became the model for decades. Modernists embraced his work: artist John Marin painted it several times; even Frank Lloyd Wright praised the lines of the building, though he decried the ornamentation. Gilbert was one of the first celebrity architects in America, designing skyscrapers in New York City and Cincinnati , campus buildings at Oberlin College and

2052-701: The modernist design of Manhattan's groundbreaking Rockefeller Center . Gilbert's body of work as a whole is more eclectic than many critics admit. In particular, his Union Station in New Haven lacks the embellishments common of the Beaux-Arts period and contains the simple lines common in Modernism. Gilbert wrote to a colleague, "I sometimes wish I had never built the Woolworth Building because I fear it may be regarded as my only work and you and I both know that whatever it may be in dimension and in certain lines it

2106-480: The nearby Traphagen School of Fashion . Additionally, Johann Berthelsen operated a private school of voice in the Rodin Studios, while architect John Eberson opened an office in the building in 1926. In 1942, the building was sold at auction to Joseph A. Hale for $ 800,500 to satisfy a lien against the Rodin Studios corporation. Two years later, in 1944, the Sipal Realty Corporation acquired

2160-661: The opening of Carnegie Hall in 1891. Several buildings in the area were constructed as residences for artists and musicians, such as 130 and 140 West 57th Street , the Osborne, and the Rodin Studios, as well as the demolished Sherwood Studios and Rembrandt. 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 at 218 West 57th Street. The Rodin Studios' site

2214-644: The south and west; it faces the Osborne to the north, The Briarcliffe to the northeast, and Carnegie Hall and Carnegie Hall Tower to the east. Other nearby buildings include the American Fine Arts Society (also known as the Art Students League of New York building) and Central Park Tower to the northwest; Alwyn Court and the Louis H. Chalif Normal School of Dancing to the northeast; and 218 and 224 West 57th Street to

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2268-400: The studio windows, as well as carvings of animals and human grotesques . 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. There are corbel tables above each of the ground-level wide bays as well as a string course above the third floor. On

2322-628: The style throughout Texas. Gilbert's drawings and correspondence are preserved at the New-York Historical Society , the Minnesota Historical Society , the University of Minnesota, and the Library of Congress . Cass Gilbert is often confused with another prominent New York architect of the time, Charles Pierrepont Henry Gilbert , in part because Frank W. Woolworth engaged both; Cass Gilbert designed

2376-406: The third and twelfth stories. The windows on Seventh Avenue are smaller sash windows, arranged into rows more typical of those in other apartment buildings. 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. The top two stories form the "cap" of the building, marked by a frieze and corbel course below

2430-440: The third through twelfth stories facing 57th Street, there are double-height window openings, designed to maximize sun exposure for artists. These double-height openings are separated by Gothic style iron canopies. 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

2484-499: The three inner bays overlapped. The duplexes in the outer bays, by contrast, were generally larger. 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, and were 30 feet (9.1 m) deep. Each unit had between three and eight rooms, with the living space on the lower floor and the bedrooms on the upper floor. The double-height studios were subsequently infilled with intermediate floor slabs, subdividing

2538-403: The twelfth story. The 57th Street side has double-height openings while the Seventh Avenue side has sash windows. On the fourteenth story, there are decorative niches in each narrow bay, containing depictions of marmosets making different facial expressions. The cornice above the fourteenth story consists of a decorative corbel table. According to the building's owner, The Feil Organization ,

2592-476: The west. Right outside the building are entrances to the New York City Subway 's 57th Street–Seventh Avenue station , served by the N , ​ Q , ​ R , and ​ W trains. The Rodin Studios is part of an artistic hub developed around the two blocks of West 57th Street from Sixth Avenue west to Broadway during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, following

2646-725: The western end of the Macombs Dam Bridge , traveling over the Harlem River , where Jerome Avenue commences in the Bronx . A lower level continues a bit further north and curves into the lower level of West 155th Street . Seventh Avenue was originally laid out in the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 . The southern terminus of Seventh Avenue was Eleventh Street in Greenwich Village through the early part of

2700-460: Was Union General Charles Champion Gilbert . When he was nine, Gilbert's family moved to St. Paul , Minnesota, where he was raised by his mother after his father died. Cass was raised Presbyterian. He attended preparatory school but dropped out of Macalester College . He began his architectural career at age 17 by joining the Abraham M. Radcliffe office in St. Paul. In 1878, Gilbert enrolled in

2754-611: Was an American architect. An early proponent of skyscrapers , his works include the Woolworth Building , the United States Supreme Court building , the state capitols of Minnesota , Arkansas , and West Virginia , the Detroit Public Library , the Saint Louis Art Museum and Public Library . His public buildings in the Beaux Arts style reflect the optimistic American sense that the nation

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2808-553: Was founded in 1916 by painters Lawton S. Parker , Georgia Timken Fry , and John Hemming Fry . The Frys were married and studied at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts , where Parker later taught; all three had studied in Paris before moving to New York City. The Frys moved to the city in 1902 and lived in numerous studio buildings, including in the nearby Gainsborough Studios from 1911 to 1918. During that time, John Fry became vice president of

2862-512: Was heir to Greek democracy, Roman law and Renaissance humanism. Gilbert's achievements were recognized in his lifetime; he served as president of the American Institute of Architects in 1908–09. Gilbert was a conservative who believed architecture should reflect historic traditions and the established social order . His design of the new Supreme Court building in 1935, with its classical lines and small size, contrasted sharply with

2916-417: Was previously occupied by the Inverness, a seven-story brick-and-stone apartment building that had been developed in 1881. The Rodin Studios building was designed by Cass Gilbert in the French Gothic style. The Wells Construction Company was the general contractor, while Hinkle Iron Works was the iron contractor. The Federal Terra Cotta Company provided the terracotta , Harrison & Meyer constructed

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