The Vanderbilt Gallery opened inside the American Fine Arts Society building on West 57th Street in New York. The gallery had been built by George Washington Vanderbilt II behind the new cooperative art building shared by the Art Students League of New York, the Society of American Artists, and the Architectural League of New York. A fetched American Fine Arts Society account gives the exact opening date, February 13, 1893, while the Art Students League's chronology explains the larger deal: Vanderbilt had financed the gallery and then donated both the gallery and its land to the society, effectively forgiving a major construction loan. The space quickly became one of New York's key late nineteenth-century exhibition rooms, used for loan shows and major art-society events.
It helped anchor West 57th Street as an important New York art district.
