The CBS Studio Building is a seven-story office building at 49 East 52nd Street in

Midtown Manhattan Midtown Manhattan is the central portion of the New York City borough of Manhattan, serving as the city's primary central business district. Midtown is home to some of the city's most prominent buildings, including the Empire State Building, the ...

, New York City. It has had various uses at different times, including serving as a

Vanderbilt family The Vanderbilt family is an American family who gained prominence during the Gilded Age. Their success began with the shipping and railroad empires of Cornelius Vanderbilt, and the family expanded into various other areas of industry and philanth ...

guest house, the first graduate school of the

Juilliard School The Juilliard School ( ) is a Private university, private performing arts music school, conservatory in New York City. Founded by Frank Damrosch as the Institute of Musical Art in 1905, the school later added dance and drama programs and became ...

, CBS Radio studios, and

Columbia Records Columbia Records is an American reco ...

studio. It is currently owned by the Fisher Brothers, who converted it to an office building in conjunction with construction of the 45-story

Park Avenue Plaza Park Avenue Plaza is an office building at 55 East 52nd Street (Manhattan), 52nd Street in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. The tall, 44-story building was designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) for development company ...

to its east.

Vanderbilts

It was built in 1908 as a guest house for the Vanderbilts who had a home a block away at

Fifth Avenue Fifth Avenue is a major thoroughfare in the borough (New York City), borough of Manhattan in New York City. The avenue runs south from 143rd Street (Manhattan), West 143rd Street in Harlem to Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village. The se ...

and 52nd. It was designed by

Warren and Wetmore Warren and Wetmore was an architecture firm based in New York City, a partnership established about 1889 by Whitney Warren (1864–1943) and Charles D. Wetmore (1866–1941). They had one of the most extensive practices of their time, and were e ...

.Gray, Christopher
"STREETSCAPES: CBS Studio on 52d; At One Time, the 'Last Word in Broadcasting Design'"
''The New York Times'', August 7, 1988

Juilliard

In 1924 the Vanderbilts sold it to the Juilliard Musical Foundation where it became Juilliard's first graduate school.

CBS Radio

In 1939,

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS (an abbreviation of its original name, Columbia Broadcasting System), is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainme ...

, which had its corporate headquarters around the corner at 485 Madison Avenue, bought the building at 49 East 52nd Street, to move its radio operations, except for the main network newsroom. Architects Fellheimer & Wagner extensively renovated the building—including eliminating the earlier Vanderbilt ornate external features and eliminating windows for soundproofing—and carved up the building into seven studios, including one which could accommodate audiences of 300 as well as symphony orchestras that could broadcast.

Arthur Godfrey Arthur Morton Godfrey (August 31, 1903 – March 16, 1983) was an American radio and television broadcaster and entertainer. At the peak of his success, in the early to mid-1950s, Godfrey was heard on radio and seen on television up to six days ...

broadcast from Studio 21 in the building and had his main office there.

Columbia Records

With the advent of television, large radio studios that could accommodate audiences were no longer needed. Radio operations moved to the

CBS Broadcast Center The CBS Broadcast Center is a television and radio production facility located on the West Side of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It is CBS's main East Coast of the United States, East Coast production hub, similar to Radford Studio Cen ...

at 524 West 57th Street. By 1966 the facility had become recording studios for

Columbia Records Columbia Records is an American reco ...

Frank Sinatra Francis Albert Sinatra (; December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer and actor. Honorific nicknames in popular music, Nicknamed the "Chairman of the Board" and "Ol' Blue Eyes", he is regarded as one of the Time 100: The Most I ...

Barbra Streisand Barbara Joan "Barbra" Streisand ( ; born April 24, 1942) is an American singer, actress, songwriter, producer, and director. With a career spanning over six decades, she has achieved success across multiple fields of entertainment, being the ...

Leonard Cohen Leonard Norman Cohen (September 21, 1934November 7, 2016) was a Canadian songwriter, singer, poet, and novelist. Themes commonly explored throughout his work include faith and mortality, isolation and depression, betrayal and redemption, soc ...

Laura Nyro Laura Nyro ( ; born Laura Nigro; October 18, 1947 – April 8, 1997) was an American songwriter and singer. She achieved critical acclaim with her own recordings, particularly the albums ''Eli and the Thirteenth Confession'' (1968) and ''Ne ...

Bob Dylan Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan; born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Described as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture over his nearly 70-year ...

(in spring 1970 for part of his New Morning album), Heylin, Clinton
''Bob Dylan: The Recording Sessions 1960–94''
Penguin. UK; St Martin's Press, US, 1995. . Cf. p.84 on use of Studio B and Studio E in New York City in 1970 which were at the Columbia Studio Building.

Paul Simon Paul Frederic Simon (born October 13, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter known for his solo work and his collaborations with Art Garfunkel. He and Garfunkel, whom he met in elementary school in 1953, came to prominence in the 1960s as Sim ...

Miles Davis Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926September 28, 1991) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th century music, 20th-century music. Davis ado ...

Paul McCartney Sir James Paul McCartney (born 18 June 1942) is an English singer, songwriter and musician who gained global fame with the Beatles, for whom he played bass guitar and the piano, and shared primary songwriting and lead vocal duties with John ...

and

Mahavishnu Orchestra The Mahavishnu Orchestra was a jazz fusion band formed in New York City in 1971, led by English guitarist John McLaughlin (musician), John McLaughlin. The group underwent several line-up changes throughout its history across its two periods of a ...

( Birds Of Fire) recorded music there. The facility contained Columbia's "Studio B" on the second floor and "Studio E" on the sixth floor. From 1974 until 1982, CBS Radio Mystery Theatre was recorded in Studio 27, renamed Studio G in honor of

Fisher Brothers

In 1979 the Fisher Brothers acquired the land under the building in conjunction with construction of the Park Avenue Plaza building to its east. However, CBS retained ownership of the building itself. In 1988 the building was leased to Sony, which had purchased CBS Records, and a Duane Reade store opened on the ground level and second floor. For several years CBS used studio space as offices. CBS eventually sold the building to Fisher Brothers in 1993, and in 1996 Fisher Brothers undid the 1930s Art Moderne style, replacing the windows and replicating the original Vanderbilt appearance.

Vanderbilts

Juilliard

CBS Radio

Columbia Records

Fisher Brothers

See also

References

Further reading