West 67th Street Artists' Colony

Apartments

The westernmost building on the north sidewalk is the Colonial Studios at 39 West 67th Street,^[19] a 14-story, neo-Renaissance structure.^[37] It was designed by Pollard & Steinam.^[29] The Colonial Studios is a steel-frame building with a brick, limestone, and copper facade interspersed with double hung windows.^[37] The main (southern) elevation has a pediment over its entrance, bands of foliate ornament, and metal bays, while the rear elevation has large windows.^[19]

The Atelier Building is at 33 West 67th Street and was designed by Simonson, Pollard & Steinam.^[33] The building stands 14 stories high,^[31] with a steel frame and a brick, limestone, iron, and terracotta facade interspersed with double hung windows.^[38] The facade has elaborate Gothic-style ornamentation at various locations. The limestone base has an entrance with animal and floral motifs, while the upper stories have details such as corbels and pointed arches. The bricks on the facade are oriented so that their narrow ends, or headers, are exposed; the headers are in various shades.^[19] In the lobby are murals by artists such as V. V. Sewell and Frank DuMond.^[39]

The 67th Street Studios, also known as 27 West 67th Street, was designed by Simonson & Sturgis.^[33] The 14-story building, described by the LPC as being in the Art Nouveau or Arts and Crafts styles, has a steel frame with iron columns.^[31] Its facade is made of brick and terracotta, with a mixture of double-hung and casement windows; the roof is made of brick and slate.^[31][40] Although the 67th Street Studios was built with gables, these have since been removed.^[19] The apartments had spaces with lower ceilings at the front and studios with higher ceilings in the rear.^[41][42]

17 West 67th Street was designed by Gronenberg and Leuchtag.^[34] Measuring 12 stories high, it is designed in the neo-Renaissance and Romanesque styles,^[9] although the decorations do not complement those of the buildings to either side.^[43] 17 West 67th Street has a brick facade and a steel frame. The window openings consist of casement windows, vertical sidelights, and horizontal transoms.^[9]

The Central Park Studios at 15 West 67th Street was designed by Simonson, Pollard & Steinam.^[35] The building rises 14 stories with a steel frame.^[44] The facade is made of brick, limestone, and terracotta.^[35] There is elaborate limestone decoration, including a projecting entrance, arches, gablets, and finials on the two lowest stories, and arches, buttresses, and gables on the three highest stories. The intermediate stories are clad in brick, with some of the headers pulled out.^[19] The windows are a mixture of arched openings and double-hung units.^[44]

At the eastern end of the colony is the Hotel des Artistes,^[45] a nine-story building at 1 West 67th Street designed by George Mort Pollard.^[36] The building has a brick-and-stone facade,^[44] with extensive terracotta or limestone decoration.^[44] The lowest two stories are clad in limestone, with trefoils, quatrefoils, finials, and a second-floor cornice. There is an ornate third-story pavilion in the entrance bay, along with finials and arches on the upper stories.^[46] The Hotel des Artistes has double-height windows facing both north and south,^[6] which consist of either casement windows or pivoting multi-paned units.^[44] Inside, the lobby has wood, iron, and plaster decorations and a mural.^[39] The structure had a mixture of artists' studios and conventional apartments from the outset,^[47][39] combining elements from studio buildings and apartment hotels.^[48][39] The apartments originally lacked kitchens,^[48] and the building has a restaurant (formerly the Café des Artistes), event spaces, and amenities such as squash courts and a swimming pool.^[39] There is also a triple-story apartment once used by author Fannie Hurst.^[49][50]

Institutions

Just east of Colonial Studios is the Swiss House at 37 West 67th Street, a five-story institutional structure designed by John E. Scharsmith.^[51][30] It was originally used by the Swiss Benevolent Society^[51] and has been used by William E. Macaulay Honors College since 2008.^[52] The Swiss House is a steel-frame building with a brick, limestone, iron, and terracotta facade interspersed with double hung windows.^[38] The base is clad with limestone, while on the upper stories, the facade is made of brick, with limestone decorations such as oriel windows, cornices, and balconies.^[19] The facade also includes the seals of Switzerland and the United States, along with seals of the Swiss cantons.^[51] The Swiss House has a pitched roof and limestone gables.^[30] Inside were originally a meeting hall on the first floor and rooms on the upper stories;^[51] after Macaulay Honors College moved in, the interiors were turned into education spaces such as classrooms.^[52]

1900s: Original buildings

Just before the colony's inception, in 1900, the stretch of 67th Street west of Central Park was mainly used as a service alleyway.^[72] The block had vacant lots and industrial uses such as stables,^[71] while hotels and apartment buildings were on adjacent blocks, facing away from 67th Street.^[72] Most occupants of the site were Black.^[73] As such, land on that block was inexpensive.^[72] The land immediately north of this section of 67th Street was occupied by low-rise rowhouses, which were subject to a restrictive covenant that prevented their demolition for 25 years.^[70][74] The first building in the colony was the 67th Street Studios at 27 West 67th Street,^[3][73][18] developed by a syndicate of ten artists led by Henry Ward Ranger.^[71][75] Ranger had first devised plans for an artists' cooperative in the late 1890s, but several years elapsed before he could obtain commitments from nine other artists to help develop the building.^[73][76] The artists unsuccessfully approached several banks for financing until they found one that agreed to finance their venture.^[77] William J. Taylor agreed to build the 67th Street Studios,^[67][76] and he took a mortgage on the site.^[77] Plans for the 67th Street Studios were filed with the Manhattan Bureau of Buildings in 1901,^[40] and the building was completed two years later.^[3][18]

With the success of the 67th Street Studios, other studio cooperatives were constructed on the same block^[78][79] and, later, elsewhere across the US.^[23] The developers of these buildings formed companies, which took out mortgages for construction and then sold shares to their residents.^[80] In these buildings, shareholders owned their personal residences and rented out the other apartments.^[75][80] The next structures to be built in the colony were the Atelier Building and the Central Park Studios.^[81][80] The Atelier and Central Park Studios were built on lots flanking the 67th Street Studios, at 33 and 15 West 67th Street respectively.^[81] Ranger began working on the Atelier soon after finishing the 67th Street Studios,^[77][39] and Taylor was retained as that building's developer, filing plans in December 1903.^[32] The artist Walter Russell developed the Central Park Studios as his first major structure,^[82] filing plans for that building in April 1904.^[83] Meanwhile, the Swiss Benevolent Society acquired land for a new clubhouse at 37 West 67th Street in February 1904 and immediately developed the Swiss House on that land.^[84] Several of the factors that had enticed the artists' cooperatives—including the presence of Central Park—also influenced the society's decision to build on 67th Street.^[10]

The Atelier and Central Park Studios were both completed in 1905,^[81] and the Swiss House opened that December.^[85] The next building in the colony to be developed was Robert Vonnoh's Colonial Studios at 39 West 67th Street.^[39] Plans for that building were filed in 1905.^[86] After that building was completed in 1907,^[87] there was no new co-op construction for nearly a decade.^[39] At the time, there were four co-ops on the block.^[39][77] The Sun wrote that the existing buildings on the block were of "a pleasing old English design", with one site on the north sidewalk and two on the south sidewalk awaiting development.^[77] By 1908, nearly all the original shareholders in the three oldest buildings still owned their shares, and many of them had made a substantial profit.^[23]

1910s to 1930s

A syndicate of artists acquired land on the north side of 67th Street near Central Park West in late 1914.^[88] This became the Hotel des Artistes at 1 West 67th Street, the first structure in the colony since the Colonial Studios.^[39] The Artists' Syndicate, the developer of the Hotel des Artistes, also developed an adjacent seven-story hotel on Central Park West, which would be demolished a decade later.^[89] Work on another apartment building at 50 West 67th Street, the first on the southern sidewalk, began in November 1915.^[55][54] This coincided with the construction of the neighboring 70 Central Park West, which began early the next year.^[13] By then, the buildings in the colony were largely profitable.^[73][75] With three apartments underway or being planned, The Sun wrote that the West 67th Street Artists' Colony was becoming "the new world's art center",^[77] and the New-York Tribune called it "New York's principal art colony".^[47] 50 West 67th Street opened in 1916,^[27] and the Hotel des Artistes was finished the next year.^[36]

After 70 Central Park West was completed in 1919, development of cooperative studios on the block largely ceased, and future buildings on the block were limited to standard apartments.^[12] In March 1920, yet another group was organized to develop a cooperative studio building at 17 West 67th Street;^[90] this building would not be completed until 1931.^[34] A dormitory opened at the Swiss House in 1923.^[91]

By the 1920s, the land values of some of the colony's lots had quadrupled from two decades prior, and many of the buildings' original shareowners were earning steady profits.^[73] Shareholders often paid their co-ops several years' rent in advance and continued to rent out apartments in their respective buildings to non-shareholders.^[92] The buildings at 15, 27, and 33 West 67th Street recorded annual rates of return of 17–23%.^[73][77] Many of the cooperatives' residents were not artists; the British magazine The Architectural Review wrote that "the artists are in the minority in some buildings" because of how popular the buildings were with non-artists.^[24] The New-York Tribune, writing about another of Russell's works, said the buildings had become "one of New York's foremost art and literary colonies".^[93] Russell said in 1925 that many of the cooperative apartments in the colony were generating profits of about double the shareholders' original investment.^[94]