Louis H. Chalif Normal School of Dancing (Now Columbia Artists Management Inc.)

History and architecture

The Louis H. Chalif Normal School of Dancing was built in 1916 to the design of architects G[eorge]. A. & H[enry]. Boehm. Louis Chalif (1876-1948), born in Odessa, Russia, and trained in ballet there, immigrated to the United States in 1904 and established his school in 1905. Called "the dean of New York dance teachers" and "the first Russian ballet master to teach in America," Chalif was a major influence on the teaching of dance within the American educational system.

The Chalif School was one of the earliest schools in the U.S. to instruct teachers in dance. The Boehm brothers' partnership lasted from about 1912 to 1927; George Boehm is best known for the design of the Jewish Daily Forward Building (1912), a designated New York City Landmark. The sophisticated asymmetrical facade of the five-story Chalif Normal School of Dancing, with motifs inspired by the Italian Renaissance and Mannerism, features upper stories clad in tan-graycolored brick, laid in a diamond pattern, and notable polychrome terra cotta (manufactured by the Federal Terra Cotta Co.) with classical and theatrical references.

It is terminated by a colonnaded loggia with a deep, overhanging copper cornice. The Chalif School moved out of this building in 1933. The structure was later owned from 1946 to 1959 by Carl Fischer, Inc., one of the most important American music publishers, which operated a retail outlet here, as well as the Carl Fischer Concert Hall. Columbia Artists Management Inc. (CAMI) acquired the building in 1959 for its headquarters and a recital hall. One of the world's largest and most influential management and booking firms specializing in classical music, opera, theater, and dance, CAMI was organized in 1930 as the Columbia Concerts Corp. through the merger of a number of leading independent concert bureaus.

For most of its history, the Chalif School building has housed organizations associated with the performing arts and has thus contributed to West 57'h Street as a cultural center.