A floor of its own on West 16th Street
The loft takes the whole ninth floor of a ten-story building, and an elevator opens straight into it. The oversized windows face south, and the walls are brick, with a ballet barre along them. From the office corner a window looks across West 16th Street at the Church of St. Francis Xavier, built in 1882.
A formal living room, a dining and media room, a kitchen with a pantry and a laundry room share the long main floor, with the home office behind glass beside the elevator. Two bedrooms, a dressing room and two bathrooms lie beyond them, and one bathroom has a marble shower and green glass tile.
The building, and the barres
Simeon B. Eisendrath designed 55 West 16th Street as one of his first commissions in New York, for L.J. Seleznick, a Pittsburgh businessman. Seleznick's four-story Knickerbocker Jewelry store, also by Eisendrath, stands on the Sixth Avenue corner next door. The Landmarks Preservation Commission dates the store to 1903 and 1904 and designated it a landmark in 1990.
The listing says the apartment was formerly the May O'Donnell Concert Dance Company, and counts the original ballet barres among the details that remain. O'Donnell danced with Martha Graham from 1932 to 1938 and created the Pioneer Woman in Graham's 1944 Appalachian Spring, and the company she founded in New York in 1949 performed into the 1980s.
The Landmarks Preservation Commission describes the side streets between Fifth and Sixth Avenues as filling, around 1900, with eight- to twelve-story store and loft buildings, and the district as one of garment makers and wholesalers. The city's lot record dates this building to 1950, but a tax photograph from 1939 or 1940 already shows it standing. It became a co-op of full-floor lofts in 1982, each with its own keyed elevator entry, and the lease on this one is twelve months from December 15.
