STUDIOS: 51 WEST 10TH STREET
Between Fifth and Sixth Avenues
NOVEMBER 10, 1938. ABBOTT FILE 312

In 1857, James Boorman Johnston commissioned the young Richard Morris Hunt, America's first French-trained architect, to design studios for artists to create, exhibit, and sell their work. The highly successful Tenth Street Studios, in which interconnected rooms radiated off a central domed gallery, became the center of New York's art world for the remainder of the nineteenth century. From his own studio, Hunt established the country's first architectural school, and an impressive array of academicians, including most of the Hudson River School, worked there.

In 1879, J. B. Johnston deeded the building to his son John Taylor Johnston, who subsequently became the first president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The same year, French-trained Impressionist painter William Merritt Chase took over the domed gallery, breathing new life into the establishment. With Chase's 1895 departure, the 10th Street Studios lost its place of prominence in New York art circles. In 1920, members purchased the building to fend off a commercial takeover. That arrangement lasted until 1956, when the building was razed to make way for the Peter Warren Apartments, an 11-story building named after an eighteenth-century Village landowner.

Abbott's interest in the building was no doubt historical. Photographing it from the second story of a row house across the street, she used her standard devices: animating the facade with shadows from buildings across the street and including a lamppost as a compositional frame.

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