The Art Students League Building has been modified several times throughout its history, and it was repaired following major fires in 1901 and 1920.

It also faces 224 West 57th Street to the southwest; 218 West 57th Street (the former Society House of the American Society of Civil Engineers) and 888 Seventh Avenue to the southeast; the Rodin Studios and Carnegie Hall to the southeast; and 200 and 220 Central Park South to the north.

[4] The Art Students League Building is part of a former artistic hub around a two-block section of West 57th Street between Sixth Avenue and Broadway.

[6][7][8] The area contains several buildings constructed as residences for artists and musicians, such as 130 and 140 West 57th Street, the Rodin Studios, and the Osborne Apartments.

[9] By the 21st century, the artistic hub had largely been replaced with Billionaires' Row, a series of luxury skyscrapers around the southern end of Central Park.

[10] The Art Students League Building at 215 West 57th Street was designed by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh in the French Renaissance style.

The main entrance is an ornate archway at the center of the ground story, which is flanked with stone balusters resembling candelabras.

[11] There are three plaques in the band course directly above the center window openings, with the words "Painting", "Architecture", and "Sculpture".

[11] The entrance foyer has mosaic-tile floors, decorative oak-wood elements, architrave moldings, and transom windows with stained glass.

[13][14] The fourth story was brightly lit by sunlight from the north, for the benefit of the artists working there, a consideration that impacted the selection of the AFAS building's site.

"[21] The interior spaces are designed to accommodate the atelier system that the Art Students League uses for its classes, in which teachers devise their own curriculums.

[15] The American Fine Arts Society was incorporated in June 1889 by Howard Russell Butler, Louis C. Tiffany, Daniel C. French, Henry J. Hardenbergh, Edward H. Kendall, Frederic Crowninshield, Charles R. Lamb, Charles Broughton, Horace Bradley, Edwin Blashfield, Francis Jones, Chester Loomis, and J. Harrison Mills.

[26][27] Life fellows were invited to all of the AFAS's private events and vote on management matters, and they also received five tickets to each show at the building.

[25][31][32][a] There were 31 entries for the competition,[25] including two from Wilson Eyre and one each from H. Langford Warren[b] and Babb, Cook & Willard.

[35] A jury, composed of Russell Sturgis, Daniel Chester French, and Henry Gurdon Marquand, was appointed to review the submissions.

[30] The competition was narrowed to three finalists in November,[33][36] and a tribunal selected Hardenbergh as architect the next month, along with Walter C. Hunting and John C.

[16] During the building's first full year of operation in 1893, it held two loan exhibitions: a set of bronzes created by Antoine-Louis Barye,[49] and Louis R. Ehrich's collection of paintings from old Dutch and Flemish painters.

[50] The next year, the AFAS hosted several exhibitions, including a show featuring pictures sent to the World's Columbian Exposition from Sweden, Norway, and Holland,[51] as well as a collection of George Inness paintings.

[16][56] The original roof, made of red tile,[35] was destroyed in May 1901 when decorations for a costume dance caught fire on the fourth floor.

The Art Students League subsequently made him an honorary member, the first non-artist to receive that award.

[59] In 1906, the Society of American Artists' first-floor space was given to the National Academy of Design after their merger.

[61] On January 30, 1920, the AFAS building was severely damaged by a fire and the original Vanderbilt Gallery was destroyed.

[63] During the following two years, as a result of the widening of 57th Street, the AFAS rebuilt the building's main entrance and the adjoining sidewalk and erected a new underground boiler room.

[66] The Art Students League bought out the other organizations' stakes shortly afterward, becoming the building's sole occupant.

[72] The work would cost $500,000 and would add a fifth floor, alleviating crowding in its classrooms and studios, which were described by former League president John Sloan as "bursting at the seams".

[73] At the end of that decade, the Art Students League replaced its ornamental iron stairway with two elevators and merged two studios on the fifth floor.

[83] The second lawsuit was dismissed through summary judgment, and an appeals court upheld the decision in March 2016, when the tower's construction was already underway.

[87] The design of the Art Students League building was initially not well received; one critic said that the facade was "commonplace…and quite unattractive".

[24][91] The New York Times, a century later, called the facade "a perfect ornamental fit" to the Art Students League.

[92] John Tauranac wrote in his book Elegant New York that the building's design was more akin to a "side-street clubhouse or mansion than art gallery and school".