Streetscapes/Hotel des Artistes,

1 West 67th Street;

Cornerstone Building on

a Block of Artists' Studios

By CHRISTOPHER GRAY

ALTHOUGH the Hotel des Artistes with its Gothic-style facade is often considered the cornerstone building on a block of artists' studios, it was actually the fifth on the street to be built. Now the co-op, completed in 1917, is weighing the advantages and disadvantages of cleaning the exterior to return it to its original appearance.

West 67th Street off Central Park West was a street of stables and light industry in 1903, when the first studio building went up at No. 27. There, a syndicate of artists built their own co-op on the north side of the street. Facing the back were double-height studio spaces with the traditional artists' northern light; smaller single-height rooms faced the front. What started as an idea became a movement, and by 1915 the street had been transformed into an artists' haven, with four tall co-ops of varying designs.

That was the year the painter Penrhyn Stanlaws, living in the second studio building, at 33 West 67th, organized a syndicate to build the biggest building yet, taking the address 1 West 67th Street and the name Hotel des Artistes. It was built as a co-op, but it also had rental units.

The architect George Mort Pollard, who had done some of the earlier buildings, worked out a broad Gothic-style H-plan building, 150 feet wide, with 72 apartments. Unlike the earlier buildings, the Hotel des Artistes not only had studios with northern light, it had southern-light studios facing the street.

Despite its name, it was a building not just about art. Stanlaws said that the 10-floor, $1.2 million structure was the largest studio building in the world. It had a swimming pool, a squash court, a sun parlor, a ballroom, a first-floor grill and, on the second floor, a much larger restaurant. The apartments did not have kitchens (they were added later); rather, the chef's salary and other dining expenses were figured in the building's budget.

Although many apartments were customized during construction, the typical floor had eight small studios facing 67th Street and six small and two double-size studios facing the rear.

The Hotel des Artistes was completed in 1917, and the 1920 census captures the building partly full. In the tally of occupations, there were 14 artists, musicians or writers, 11 actors or movie executives, and 22 stockbrokers, engineers, and other business people. The most frequent occupation listed was household servant -- 26 in all.

The artistic contingent included Walter Russell, a Paris-trained artist who had studied with Howard Pyle and painted Theodore Roosevelt's children, and who was one of the originators of the studio idea on West 67th. His neighbors included William Cotton, a muralist, who decorated the old Times Square and Selwyn Theaters; Howard Chandler Christy, who did the murals in the present Cafe des Artistes, which is adjacent to the building's lobby; and Carolyn Wells Houghton, a popular writer of mysteries and humor books, among them ''The Rubaiyat of a Motor Car.''

The motion-picture side of the building included Alan Crosland, who directed Al Jolson's ''Jazz Singer'' of 1927, and George Fitzmaurice, who directed Greta Garbo in the 1931 ''Mata Hari.'' In 1925 Fitzmaurice had predicted that, since movies were already being shown on Paris-to-London airplanes, they would soon be available in New York subway cars.

Most of the apartments were small, and there were plenty of one-person households. But Aaron Naumburg, a fur dealer, had an expansive top-floor apartment, filled with art and furnishings. He left his collection to the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard, which still displays it in a reproduction of Naumburg's 67th Street studio, though it is primarily used for staff events and receptions and is not usually open to the public. Naumburg's apartment was later owned by the writer Fannie Hurst.

AS the Scottish-born Stanlaws was building the Hotel des Artistes, he was also planning other projects. In 1919 he and Pollard organized the studio building at 2 West 67th Street, and Stanlaws had the architects Carrere & Hastings plan a grandiose hotel-apartment-resort complex in Port Washington, L.I., that was never built. Stanlaws also directed Adolphe Menjou in the 1922 movie ''Singed Wings,'' but his most notable accomplishment remained the Hotel des Artistes. He eventually moved to California, where he died in 1957.

A 1950's brochure offered large studio apartments in the Hotel des Artistes for $150 a month, and listed as prominent recent tenants Noel Coward, the writer Edna Ferber and the actress ZaSu Pitts. In 1952 the ballroom was rented to ABC as a television studio.

Now the Hotel des Artistes has had a New Jersey engineering firm, JMA Consultants, prepare specifications for repairs to the lintels and brickwork on the rear and sides of the building, a project that is about to go ahead. Gerard J. Picaso, the managing agent, said that the board is looking into cleaning the 67th Street facade. Most of that elevation looks like gray brick, but a test cleaning patch shows that it was originally buff, probably to be complementary to the limestone and terra cotta also on the facade.

Mr. Picaso said that, considering the building's giant studio windows, the co-op is moving carefully. The two principal ways of cleaning are a water-only method, in which sprayers mist the building for days at a time, dislodging the dirt, and a detergent-and-water method, which involves power washing.

Either way, Mr. Picaso said, ''you're just saturating the exterior -- and hoping it doesn't saturate all the way in.''

One of the city's most famous and illustrious buildings, the Hotel Des Artistes is the largest "studio" building in the city and was designed as an artist's cooperative apartment building.

The 18-story building has 115 apartments, most duplexes with double-height living rooms and balcony bedrooms. It is one of several such "studio" buildings on the block between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue designed by George Mort Pollard.

The building was developed by Walter Russell several years after a group of artists, included famed Impressionist Childe Hassam, built a "studio" building at 27 West 67th Street.

The base of the building's façade is decorated with many figures of artists and many of the apartments have English Renaissance-style paneling, beamed ceilings and fireplaces.



Among the building's many famous residents have been Isadora Duncan, the dancer, Noel Coward, the playwright, writer Fannie Hurst, who had a very large triplex penthouse, New York City Mayor John V. Lindsay, writer Alexander Woollcott, and Norman Rockwell, the artist. Artist Howard Chandler Christy, an early resident, painted murals for the building's famous restaurant, Café des Artistes.Despite its name, the building was never a hotel although its amenities were and are very impressive. The building had a communal restaurant, squash courts, a swimming pool, a theater and a ballroom as well as its own telephone switchboard. The theater and ballroom have been converted to other uses, but the building and most apartments now have their own kitchens. The neo-Gothic-style building, which has a canopied entrance and large lobby, has a concierge and elevator person.

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