Juilliard. No other New York name, without the definite article, so resonates – except maybe Tiffany’s. What the two names have in common is that to all the world they connote quality. Juilliard (seldom referred to as “the Juilliard School”) may be the best-known performing arts school in the world. Now celebrating its 100th year of turning out artists, the school is by itself a measure of New York’s supremacy as a performing arts center.

But while its reputation is well-known, its history is less so. How did it end up on the campus of Lincoln Center? And who was Juilliard, anyway?

The school was named for Augustus Juilliard. He was born in Ohio, the son of Burgundian Huguenots who had come to this country in 1836. His principal business was the dry-goods firm of A.D. Juilliard & Company. But as he prospered, he served on the boards of several railroads and insurance companies. He also served as a trustee of numerous arts institutions, most notably serving as president of the Metropolitan Opera and Real Estate Company, which indicates he had musical interests.

Absent from his 1919 obituary in the New York Times (which was headlined “A.D. Juilliard, Capitalist, Dies”) is any mention of a music school. A couple of months later, however, it was announced that Juilliard had left gifts to a number of institutions, and that his residuary estate would go toward the establishment of the Juilliard Musical Foundation. The residuary estate was $13 million (almost $160 million in today’s dollars), but a school bearing his name was not mentioned specifically.

A week or so after the announcement of Juilliard’s extraordinary, though vague, bequest, the famous conductor Artur Bodanzky, in what the Times called “the first suggestion offered by a leading musician as to the great fund,” said, “What America needs most is a great national conservatory of music, with a personnel of instructors selected from the best in the world.” Following up on Bodanzky’s suggestion, Philharmonic conductor Josef Stransky said the fund should be used to form a “super school” for the best students from other conservatories.

The Juilliard Musical Foundation bided its time. There was the obligatory litigation contesting the will and much bated breath in the music world. In June 1924 the foundation announced that it would soon begin to operate a music school where 100 students, chosen by competition, would receive fellowships to study under top instructors in the fields of piano, singing, bowed instruments, and composition.

Among the best music schools of the time was the 22-year-old Institute of Musical Art, which since 1910 had been located at 120 Claremont Avenue, at West 122nd Street. In 1926, the Juilliard Musical Foundation – whose trustees felt it wasn’t doing nearly enough with the bequest of Juilliard – merged with the Institute of Musical Art. The Juilliard trustees said the Institute “occupied a leading and distinctive position among the schools of music in this country” – as indeed it did, with an all-star faculty. Thus, the ultimate effect of the Juilliard bequest was to transform what was already one of the leading music schools in America into what, with its lavish new endowment, well outpaced all rivals.

The Juilliard School of Music, as the newly combined entity was called, occupied the former Institute of Musical Art building on Claremont Avenue. Its president for its first 11 years was John Erskine, the one-time Columbia English professor, core-curriculum advocate, and best-selling author of “The Private Life of Helen of Troy.” When Augustus Juilliard’s bachelor son Frederic died in 1937, he significantly augmented the school’s endowment. In 1945, composer William Schuman became Juilliard’s president. He established the Juilliard String Quartet in 1946, and added a dance division in 1951. Schuman left Juilliard to become president of Lincoln Center, the extravagant grouping of performing arts buildings rising from the dust of a recently bulldozed Lincoln Square neighborhood. Soon after his appointment, Schuman announced that Juilliard would become part of Lincoln Center. In 1968, under Schuman’s successor, Peter Mennin, Juilliard added a drama division, with John Houseman its director. A year later, Juilliard finally moved to Lincoln Center from Claremont Avenue, to a travertine-clad building, co-designed by the famous modern architect Pietro Belluschi, in the northeastern part of the Lincoln Center “campus.” That year, the Manhattan School of Music moved into Juilliard’s old Claremont Avenue digs, where it remains today.

But no matter where its buildings were located, Juilliard has long had the power to attract and nurture the top talent across the performing arts. It has counted among its students Leonard Slatkin, Renee Fleming, Leontyne Price, Itzhak Perlman, Pina Bausch, Paul Taylor, Kelsey Grammer, Kevin Spacey – and Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Indeed, it is the Tiffany’s of performing arts schools.