No. 16 East 69th Street

photo by Alex Citrin, The New York Observer

In the 1880s, as Central Park was drawing more and more New Yorkers north, the blocks leading off 5th Avenue were being developed with elegant residences. Such a home was constructed around 1881 at 16 East 69th Street, steps from the park and about 10 blocks north of the massive mansion of Cornelius Vanderbilt and his wife Alice.

The 33-foot wide structure was home to C. Adolph Low, the cousin of Columbia University President Seth Low and it was here in August of 1897 that the glittering wedding reception of his daughter, Edith Westervelt Low was held.

Low sold the house a week before Christmas in 1899 to William E. Shepard, who had married the sister of Alice Gwynn Vanderbilt, Cettie Gwynn, in 1888. While the Shepards rubbed shoulders with New York’s most socially elite, their acceptance into the most exclusive circles was due more to who Mrs. Shepard’s sister was than who her husband was.

Nonetheless, No. 16 East 69th Street was the scene of lavish dinners and receptions for years. Yet, after the death of William Edgar Shepard, Cettie’s circumstances became difficult. Alice Vanderbilt quietly stepped in, purchasing the house and in December 1914 transferring the title to what The New York Times referred to as “the costly residence” to her sister.

Cettie lived on at No. 16 until April 30, 1928 when she sold it to an insurance executive for $250,000. Plans to update the aging house were almost immediate. In 1929 plans for alterations were filed with the Department of Buildings and architect A. Wallace McCrea was commissioned to give the house a facelift.

McCrea produced a neo-Georgian façade of red brick with limestone trim. A fifth story disguised by a brick-and-stone balustrade was added to accomodate servants’ rooms. The stoop was removed and the entrance lowered to street level.

Wealthy real estate mogul and builder Walter J. Salmon and his family lived here for nearly three decades. In 1940 the socially prominent Salmons were publically embarrassed when their son, Burton, a student at Yale, was jailed after a fatal auto accident on 5th Avenue.

Salmon raised race horses and on December 12, 1948 Mrs. Salmon hosted a committee meeting at No. 16 to discuss plans for a Mid-Winter Ball in the Plaza Hotel which would include a horse auction to benefit the Ellin Prince Speyer Hospital for Animals.

Walter J. Salmon died in the house in 1953 and three years later Mrs. Salmon sold the home to the English Speaking Union, which initiated a two-year renovation into a “club” which opened in January 1958.

The English Speaking Society shortly after renovating No. 16 -- photo NYPL Collection

The organization holds classes in English as a second language and pairs native English speakers with persons newly arrived in New York. After four decades in the building, the Union decided to sell and in the spring of 1999 put the house on the market. Explaining the decision, Executive Director of the Union, Alice Boyne, said at the time, “it’s the largest asset that we hold.” The Union felt the funds could be better used in funding scholarships and language programs. “We’re not about mortar and brick,” Boyne said.

In 2000 the Wall Street Journal reported that  investment banker Roger Barnett sold his web-based company, Beauty.com, to Amazon.com for $42 million.  That same year he and his author-heiress wife, Sloan Lindemann Barnett, purchased No. 16 East 69th Street for approximately $11 million.

The Barnetts hired Fred L. Sommer & Associates to reconvert the building to a single-family home, after which interior designer Peter Marino (who has designed for names like Andy Warhol, Calvin Klein and Giorgio Armani) decorated the interiors. According to real estate brokers, the renovations cost the Barnetts approximately the same amount they paid for the building.

Inside the entrance door, guests found themselves in a marble foyer. There were separate passenger and staff elevators. The second floor featured a living room, capable of entertaining 100 guests, that spanned the width of the house, and a dining room with 14-foot ceilings.

photo by Curbed New York

Seven years later the Barnetts were ready to move on. They quietly put the house on the market for $62 million. Although there were no bites at that price, the house sold in 2010 for $48 million to their friend, Johnson & Johnson heiress Libet Johnson.

Like so many other grand mansions near the park which have recently been reconverted to private homes, No. 16 East 69th Street is a remarkable property with a stunning price tag.

The William Starr Miller House - 1048 5th Avenue (Neue Galerie)

The William Starr Miller residence today - photo by razr

By the time William Starr Miller retired from the legal profession, the neighborhood around his elegant brownstone residence at 39 5th Avenue, between 10th and 11th Streets, was becoming less and less exclusive. Apartment buildings were replacing the staid old homes of New York’s elite as the wealthy moved further and further uptown.

Miller, who remained an active industrialist and real estate operator, commissioned Carrere & Hasting in 1912 to design his new home at 1048 Fifth Avenue at the southeast corner of East 86th Street across from Central Park. The firm, which had just completed the magnificent white marble New York Public Library, created a surprising red brick and limestone Louis XIII palace that would easily be at home in Paris’s Place des Vosges.

Possibly following the lead of Andrew Carnegie’s 64-room brick and limestone English Georgia residence completed in 1903, the architects' choice of styles and materials was unusual nevertheless. On an avenue lined with white marble and limestone chateaux and palazzos, many of them dripping with scrolled brackets, swags and garlands, Starr’s mansion was quietly restrained in comparison.

Facing 86th Street, the house sat on a rusticated base, the central three bays projecting from the bulk of the structure. A high slate mansard roof with tall stone-framed dormers sat behind a limestone balustrade.

As the mansion neared completion The New York Times commented on the atypical choice of style and materials on December 7, 1913. “There is a dignity and simplicity far more pleasing than some of the excruciatingly ornate creations on the avenue,” the newspaper said. “The use of red brick with limestone adds a cheerful touch of color suggestive of early Colonial to the Miller house.” The Times added that the new house would be “of more than ordinary importance.”

By 1921 The Times had changed its opinion of the mansion. It report that Starr’s 33-year old daughter, Edith Starr Miller, had quietly married the divorced 60-year old Lord Queenborough in “the big dull red and gray house.”

In 1922 the house was still surrounded by older brownstone row houses -- NYPL Collection

If The Times found the exterior big and dull, the interiors were sumptuous. The library and drawing room were oak-paneled, the dining room hung with tapestries, and the second floor music room spacious.

The quiet wedding in the music room of No. 1048 5th Avenue did not last. In 1932 Edith sued the baron for separation on ground of “cruelty, inhuman treatment and abandonment.” The following year she died at age 45 in Paris.

William Starr Miller died in the mansion on September 14, 1935 followed by his wife nine years later. The house was opened in November 1944 for buyers to preview the art and furnishings as preparations were made to auction off the Miller estate.

A month earlier the mansion had been sold to the most socially-prominent name in New York.

On October 44 The New York Times reported “Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt, whose historic and palatial home at 640 Fifth Avenue recently was acquired by the William Waldorf Astor estate, has purchased the large stone house at 1048 Fifth Avenue, southeast corner of Eighty-sixth Street.”

Mrs. Vanderbilt, accustomed to the much larger home to the south, referred to the Miller mansion as “the gardener’s cottage.” Cottage or not, Mrs. Vanderbilt made the house the center of lavish entertainments, charity events and glittering balls.

Here on the night of January 8, 1953, the undisputed leader of New York and Newport society died of pneumonia.

The house, for half a century the place of dinner parties and balls for the cream of New York society, was purchased by YIVO Institute for Jewish research. The institute converted the mansion to offices; however because funds were tight, rather than strip out the architectural detailing the institute simply covered them over.

Cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder conceived of a museum in the 1990s to house his collection of German and Austrian modern art. Lauder partnered with his friend, art dealer Serge Sabarsky whose collection was comparable. The two quietly purchased the Miller mansion from YIVO in 1994 and initiated a four-year renovation and restoration of the structure.

Architect Annabelle Selldorf was given the task of sensitively bringing the mansion back to life and creating an art museum. The marble pilasters in the former music room re-emerged as did the oak paneling and carved ornamentation.


photo by Gryffindor

Sabarsky died before the project was completed; yet today the Neue Galerie is home to paintings by such artists Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Paul Klee. In 2006 Klimt’s painting Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer was put on exhibition, Lauder having purchased it for a reported $135 million.

The exquisite home remains remarkably intact, an elegant survivor of Upper Fifth Avenue's golden age.