The Association of the Bar of the City of New York

History and architecture

Although severe in its Classic Eclectic design, the limestone facade of this building has great strength and dignity as befits a structure housing distinguished members of the legal profession. With two entrances, one on 43rd Street and the ether on 44th Street, the latter is the most important. This consists of a recessed porch with two magnificent fluted Doric columns. A strong horizontal stone band separates the base from the second floor and extends the entire width of the building.

Rising above and extending through the third and fourth stories are four pairs of well proportioned Corinthian pilasters forming three distinct bays of which the center one is wider than those on either side. The windows of the third floor are small, but those on the fourth are wide with small Ionic columns at each window. A Corinthian cornice boasting beautifully detailed brackets (modillions) crowns the building and gives it a fitting termination.

The detail is in excellent taste and in good scale, producing a most distinguished structure.

The Association of the Bar of the City of New York was founded in 1870 "for the purpose of maintaining the honor and dignity of the profession of the Law, of cultivating social relations among its members and increasing its usefulness in promoting the due administration of justice". The club has numbered among its past presidents such famous lawyers and jurists as: John W. Davis, Charles Evans Hughes and Henry L. Stimson, to name just a few of the illustrious members, who have helped to shape the opinions and policies of the Bar Association and the practices of the legal profession. in New York City and the entire country. There is within the building one of the largest law libraries in the country, a collection of over 320,000 volumes.