An on-site café-restaurant helped to compensate for the building's lack of kitchenettes and became popular for the social interaction it enabled as well as the meals it provided.

In its early years, the building adjoined the homes of prosperous art collectors and a later transformation brought luxury shops and tony cultural institutions as its neighbors.

With all these advantages, "the Sherwood", as it came to be called, succeeded in attracting artists who were comfortably well off, whether because they had already established successful careers or because they benefited from inherited wealth.

Such men as Coleman and Church, extracted a conditional promise from me years ago that I would plan and build an establishment coming within the means of artists in this country, who have, by the way, to be content with smaller prices than their brethren in Europe, but are, nevertheless, in the receipt of sufficient incomes to live comfortably, even elegantly, in quarters suited to their professional and personal requirements.

[6]: 23  However, more than a decade later, the block of the street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues was still mostly undeveloped and noted for its boulders and deep ravines where squatters lived in shanties.

A directory of 1881 adds the names of other prominent citizens including merchant Augustus D. Juilliard, financier William Bayard Cutting, and banker Jacob Schiff.

[6]: 78  Another called them "the brown-stone mansions of rich brewers, the François Premier chateaux of bankers, the Gothic palaces of railroad kings".

[3][note 3] When the Sherwood Studio Building was developed, many lots in the area measured 25 by 100 ft (7.6 by 30.5 m), a real estate practice that had begun during colonial times.

[5]: 74  In 1871, a man named William Sloan paid $88,000 to Frederick Hornby to purchase the four lots on which the Sherwood Studio Building would be constructed.

[4][23] His aim, as he put it, was to "plan and build an establishment coming within the means of artists in this country, who have, by the way, to be content with smaller prices than their brethren in Europe, but are, nevertheless, in the receipt of sufficient incomes to live comfortably, even elegantly, in quarters suited to their professional and personal requirements".

He hoped his artist tenants would form a "sort of exclusive colony" to which none would be admitted who were "likely to prove offensive members of the general body politic".

[4] During the late 1870s, real estate construction experienced dramatic growth as the recovery from the Panic of 1873 as financial confidence increased and low-interest loans became more readily available while at the same time the cost of labor and materials remained relatively low.

[3] Considered by a contemporary to have a plain facade with "no extraneous ornament", its exterior walls were made of red brick accompanied by stone and iron elements.

They possessed conveniences that were not widely available at the time including hot and cold water, electric bells, speaking tubes, gas (for illumination), and central heating.

[24][25] Writing in 1910, an observer said the building looked "almost as fresh as when it was erected, its precise lines testifying to an exceptional thoroughness of construction".

As one man who knew the place well wrote, it had by then become a "hive of studios where much has been produced that has proved illustrious in American art for three decades past".

[28] In succeeding decades, the building would also attract a growing number of non-artists who appreciated the artistic ambiance and found the large studio rooms ideal for entertaining guests.

In a 1903 short story, a young lady asks a gentleman friend to escort her to an "artists' frolic" saying she is determined to "do something desperate".

[31] Artists would also hold late-night parties on the spur of the moment, including, according to one investigator, "dances, card games, concerts, or boozy salons".

[28] The artist tenants did not voice complaints about the building in the local press, however, Carroll Beckwith did use his diary to record that Sherwood antagonized all the workers he employed, "grinding them down to the last cent".

[6]: 1  Back in 1877, an article in The New York Times had judged that train running on elevated tracks and giving frequent service from Lower Manhattan up to Central Park was the city's "most pressing want".

[35] During that year and the next, the Gilbert Elevated Railway Company constructed and opened the Sixth Avenue Line; it proved to be a commercial success, drawing as many passengers as could fill its cars.

[41] In 1913, one of the city's few female hotel owners and real estate speculators, Jennie K. Stafford, acquired the building in a trade worth $750,000.

In 1916, a news account said she was "known in the hotel world as one of the most capable managers in the country and among real estate operators as one who has made a fortune in her tradings.

[51] In 1943, the Andros Realty Corporation bought up the property fronting Sixth Avenue to the south of the Sherwood and in 1944 filed a building plan for a large apartment house with a footprint covering almost the entire block from 56th to 57th Street.

The firm operated a wholesale business as well as retail stores and specialized, as an article in the New York Times stated, "in the finest grades of fancy groceries, both imported and domestic, as well as wines, liquors, and cigars.

[57] When it opened and for the first few decades of its existence, the Sherwood Studio Building attracted as its tenants those relatively mature New York artists whose careers had flourished during the last third of the 19th century.

Many of the men in this group had met each other in Paris when, in common with many other American artists of the period, they sought to increase the sophistication of their work by exposure to European Beaux-Arts influences.

[71] Examples of late 19th century residents who were once popular include John Henry Dolph (1835–1903), known for landscapes and pictures of pet dogs and kittens; Adolfo Müller-Ury (1862–1947), known for portraits and still lifes; Francis Coates Jones (1857–1932), known for floral, figure, and mural painting; and Ralph Albert Blakelock (1847–1919), known for landscapes and portraits.

May Wilson Preston (1873–1949), an illustrator and painter of figures and landscapes, is an example of an artist who lived in the building during the first two decades of the 20th century.