27 West 67th Street (also known as 67th Street Studios) is a cooperative apartment building located in the West 67th Street Artists' Colony near Lincoln Square on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, New York City, United States. Completed late in 1902 and opened early the next year, it was designed by artist Henry Ward Ranger and financed by an association of his fellow artists. Ranger's innovative design provided for compact duplex apartments conjoined with large north-facing studios. The association was organized as a corporation whose financial structure followed a cooperative model. The corporation built and managed the co-op while its artist-investors held leases for the studio apartments they occupied. The project was an immediate success, leading other artist-investors to finance and build similar studio co-ops nearby. In 1995, following a thorough restoration, the architectural historian Christopher Gray wrote that the building was "one of the most important apartment houses in the history of New York City". As evidenced by the cost of ownership and demand for its studio apartments, the co-op has continued to thrive in the early years of the 21st century.
Background
Site history
The Dutch of New Amsterdam had forced the original Indian tribes off Manhattan Island before the English took control in 1674. In 1708 the city began to make the Upper West Side accessible to residents by building an extension of Broadway called Bloomingdale Road. At that time the area was rural, and it remained sparsely settled through the 18th and much of the 19th century. A detail from a map prepared in 1821 shows its dispersed farmhouses. See Image No. 1. A sheet from a fire insurance atlas made about forty years later shows a few substantial brick buildings close to Bloomingdale Road but only a smattering of small wooden structures in and near the block where the studio building would later be constructed. See Image No. 2. Following the completion of Central Park in 1876, speculators began to place large apartments like the elegant Dakota on the blocks between the park's western boundary and Columbus Avenue, but most of the area still remained home to squatters' shanties, stables, lumber yards, and disreputable saloons, and many of its streets remained unpaved. A photo taken from the roof of the Dakota about 1890 shows Central Park West at left and the area to its west from 72nd Street south to 59th or 60th. See Image No. 3.
Economic prosperity, the attractions of Central Park, expansion of the rapid transit system, and improvements in elevator technology, together with the relatively low cost of land, caused real estate speculators to put up large apartment houses, mostly, like the Dakota, on the avenues and broad crosstown streets in the neighborhood.
Demand for artists' studios Often called the city's Gilded Age, the period between 1870 and 1900 was remarkable for its economic growth, for the displays of wealth by its opulent citizens, and for the dramatic expansion of its cultural activity. Newly prosperous New Yorkers began to assemble art collections, first concentrating on highly regarded European artists and then, increasingly, on paintings and sculptures by Americans. By 1912, as one artist put it, "the American artist's work is [now] as good an investment artistically and financially as his fellow artists abroad." This artist concluded by writing, bluntly, that investment in the work of American artists "will pay better than so many stocks and bonds". At the turn of the century the city's newly prosperous artists found themselves with more money to spend on studios and apartments but also, as prosperity induced a general quest for improved living standards, with more competition with each other for a limited number of places in which to live and work. The relatively few studios that existed tended to be poorly maintained, inconveniently located, or lacking in useful amenities. Very few were suitable as living quarters, forcing artists to rent apartments and studios separately. Some, moreover, had their north-facing windows overshadowed by new apartment buildings or had their light disturbed by reflections off other nearby buildings. Contemporaries pointed out that artists wanted studios that were big enough for the receptions they held for collectors and friends but that studios of that size tended to be poorly located, often in converted stables within unattractive neighborhoods.
Demand for cooperative apartments
The cooperative model for financing and erecting apartment buildings was not new when the 67th Street studio apartment was built. There was even precedent for artist co-ops, but by the end of the 19th century few existed and, as one writer said, the practice of co-op construction was then "languishing". One of the strengths of the model was also a drawback: the men who formed cooperative associations had to have trust in one another, a willingness to withstand market fluctuations, and savings to invest. By the end of the 19th century so many artists had achieved economic success that one of their number, who recognized the advantages of the cooperative model, was able to find a few like-minded associates who trusted one another, tolerated risk, and were willing to join with him. One of their motivations was strictly financial: the traditional method of constructing apartment buildings was risky, wasteful, and excessively expensive. As one writer said, the ordinary practice at the time relied heavily on short-term loans, middle-man markups, and the need to insure against the risk of a deal failing before the building was opened and rented out. The writer concluded that in strictly financial terms a cooperative venture would have "an enormous advantage over the ordinary speculative operator." As well as saving money, the artists who joined expected to obtain working and living conditions far better than traditional apartment buildings could provide. As a writer of the time noted, artists had no say in the design or operation of the many newly built apartment houses and believed themselves compelled to pay high rents for inadequate accommodations.
Organization of the cooperative association At the peak of his career, Henry Ward Ranger had achieved remarkable success. Writers called him the "dean of American landscape painters", described him as a "commanding figure" and "pictorial genius", and concluded, shortly before his death, that he was "unquestionably one of the few great artists America has produced." An exhibition held shortly after he died set an American record for the average price per picture of works by a single artist.
In the late 1880s, having grown frustrated with the studio arrangements that were available to him, Ranger took matters into his own hands. Having prepared detailed plans for a studio building, he sought a builder willing to carry out the project. Finding none, he assembled a small group of like-minded artist-investors to form a cooperative association. In 1898 the group discussed options and agreed to form a corporation whose stockholders would finance, construct, occupy, and manage a new studio apartment building. They arranged that the stock they purchased would be non-assessable, meaning the corporation could not put them under any further financial obligation, and they understood they would be jointly responsible for covering any losses the corporation might incur. After forming the corporation and funding it, they arranged a $160,000 mortgage from the Greenwich Savings Bank. These steps convinced builder William J. Taylor to agree to erect the building. Taylor and the corporation of artists selected D.M.B. Sturgis and B.H. Simonson as architects and work began early in 1901.
Ranger became the corporation's president. The secretary was Louis Paul Dessar. Jules Turcas was treasurer. The directors were Childe Hassam, Frank DuMond, Charles Frederick Naegele, Robert Van Vorst Sewell, Sydney A. Smith, and Alan Butler Talcott. The name they chose for the corporation was the Sixty-seventh Street Studio Building Association of New York City. By the time the building opened in March 1903, another artist, Walter Russell, had purchased stock and joined the association. Among those who signed on as tenants when the building was under construction were the artists Robert Vonnoh and his wife Bessie Potter Vonnoh, and Charles Graham.
The building had a mix of large and small studio apartments. Most of the large ones were intended for the cooperative investors and all the small ones were to be rented. The stockholders each paid rent to the corporation for the apartments they occupied. Based on a square foot computation, the rents were lower than were then charged in comparable fireproof buildings. The large studios rented at $2,000 per year. The small studios came in two configurations, the larger ones renting for $750 and the smaller ones for $600. Stockholders received dividends based on the total income of the property from apartment rentals less the corporation's outlays (mortgage payments, operating expenses, and money set aside as reserve). Shares of stock were apportioned according to the size of the apartment occupied, and each stockholder paid a portion of overall expenses. Stockholders were permitted to rent out their apartments if they wished. The corporation would assess the stockholders to make up shortfalls in years when there was a net loss if this were ever to happen.
Location and design ]
As its construction site, the corporation bought a parcel of three vacant lots in the middle of the north side of 67th Street between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue. The site was close to rapid transit, near Central Park, and surrounded by many buildings that had recently been erected in the neighborhood. While a fire insurance map of 1892 had revealed very little, a detail from a birds-eye-view published just before construction began shows substantial construction. See Images Nos. 4 and 5. At the back of the parcel was a group of single-family brownstone-fronted homes that were low enough not to overshadow the north side of the studio building and, due to a covenant restricting their alteration, would not overshadow it for at least the next 25 years.
The architects produced the drawings that Taylor needed, but made few changes in Ranger's designs. In 1909 Taylor told an interviewer, "Mr. Ranger's plans worked out perfectly in every detail."
Since the three lots each measured 25 by 100 feet and since there were no setback rules in force, the building could theoretically have measured 75 feet wide by 100 feet deep. Ranger's design was more compact: a street-facing rectangular section 75 wide by 52.5 feet deep having a square extension at its back measuring 32.5 on a side. A detail from a fire insurance map of 1907 shows the plot and the building's shape. See Image No. 6.
The building was constructed of brick, structural iron, and other fireproof materials and had a slate and brick roof. Its front wall was decorated in a pattern of colored bricks with molded brick window borders. The windows were multi-paned green casements. The ornamentation was in the then-current version of neo-Gothic design. Some of the detail work can be seen in a photo of the entrance that was taken during construction. See Image No. 7. A modern photo shows how it looked when complete. See Image No. 8.
A photo taken about 1905, after a companion studio building had been built on its west side, shows the location of the entrance and the general appearance of its facade, and shows as well the back of the low buildings to its north. See Image No. 9. A modern photo shows the facade as it looked in 2022. See Image No. 10.