Living Spaces Tailor-Made for Artists (Published 2006)

ITS intricate facade is now hidden under scaffolds and netting, but the Rodin Studios at 200 West 57th Street, at the southwest corner of Seventh Avenue, still holds its own with its neighbors Carnegie Hall and the Osborne apartments.

Built as a particularly elegant residence and professional building for designers and artists, its giant studios are long gone, but even obscured, the building's French Gothic detailing is still noteworthy.

At Seventh Avenue and 57th Street, the early apartment houses on Seventh -- the most famous being the Alwyn Court at 58th Street -- meet the art-related buildings on 57th, like the Art Students League at 215 West 57th.

In his 1916 design for the Rodin project, Cass Gilbert mixed the two strands to produce one of the most elegant studio and apartment buildings in New York, a shimmering cascade of French Gothic ornament running down the 57th Street facade like a sheet of water.

Three painters originated the enterprise: Georgia Fry; her husband, John; and their colleague Lawton S. Parker. All had studied or taught at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts and had then established themselves in the New York art world.

Gilbert is not known for apartment-house design, but he had gained prominence with his Woolworth Building, the Gothic-style skyscraper that was the tallest in the world at its completion in 1913.