[2][6] The founder and driving force of the school, Ellen Dunlap Hopkins, was involved in the academic program, fund-raising among wealthy individuals, management, and administration.

[2] Unique at its time for providing advanced education to working-class women, its purpose was that "of affording to women inspiration which may enable them to earn a livelihood by the employment of their taste and manual dexterity in the application of ornamental design to manufacture and the arts.

It employed Henry L. Parkhurst of Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company to teach book cover design; Paul de Longpré taught watercolor flower painting; Daniel Carter Beard taught animal drawing.

[2] Its original directors were James Carroll Beckwith of the Art Students League of New York and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Reverend Dr. John Wesley Brown of Saint Thomas Church, lawyer and statesman Elihu Root, and Ellen Dunlap Hopkins.

The front entry on 30th Street has a double-paneled doorway and paneled spandrel, above which is a cornice and then a five-paned transom.

[9] In 1992, the building underwent a $750,000 renovation, led by the architectural firm Lemberger Brody Associates,[3] and became the school's Lexington Avenue campus,[11] It had ten classrooms, a library, two reading rooms, and a laboratory.

[9] It is now the site of Dover Street Market, having undergone an architectural project that reflected the design aesthetics of founder Rei Kawakubo, which was implemented by architect Richard H. Lewis.

The citation stated, "Courageous leader in the education of women, student of the arts and friend of the artists, sympathetic teacher of young designers destined to improve by their work and their ideas the standards of art in industry, founder of the New York School of Applied Design and for 45 years its guide and counselor, devout adherent of the belief that the might of the fine design will make the right of successful industrial art.

[13] On the CBS television show Person of Interest, the building at 160 Lexington Avenue was used in the 2011 pilot episode for exterior shots of the "Library" which was the base of operations for Harold Finch and his team.

[14] Media related to New York School of Applied Design for Women at Wikimedia Commons