19 Gramercy Park South, also known as 86 Irving Place or the Stuyvesant Fish House, is a four-story row house located at the corner of Gramercy Park South (East 20th Street) and Irving Place in the Gramercy Park neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City.
The house was built in 1845 by William Samuel Johnson, a Whig politician, and then had the address 86 Irving Place. [1] [2] Johnson sold the property to Horace Brooks, who added a fifth story and constructed a stable on the unused southern part of the property. [2] The census of 1880 shows a number of different people living at the address, suggesting that it had been converted into apartments by that time. [3]
In 1887, this modest property was expanded and altered by noted architect Stanford White [4] at the cost of $130,000 [2] into a mansion with an interior marble staircase and a ballroom on the top floor where Mamie Fish gave elaborate parties for New York society. [5] The building was also re-numbered 19 Gramercy Park, an address which had not existed prior to that time. [2]
The Fish family left for their new 78th Street home in 1898, and the building was broken up into small apartments; [5] actor John Barrymore was a resident while he was in New York working on Broadway. [6] Occupants at other times included playwright Edward Sheldon and William C. Bullitt, the diplomat, journalist and novelist. [7] In 1909, a six-story apartment building was constructed on the southern part of the lot. [3]
The building was rescued from decay in 1931 by noted publicist Benjamin Sonnenberg when he and his wife rented the first two floors, gradually expanding and taking over other apartments. In 1945, Sonnenberg bought the entire building from Fish's son, Stuyvesant Fish Jr., for $85,000, and combined it with the apartment building to the south to create a massive residence which noted architecture critic Brendan Gill called "the greatest private house remaining in private hands in New York." [3] The mansion was extensively furnished with Sonnenberg's collection of English and Irish furniture, drawings by Old Masters and sculptures. [2] [5] Like the Fishes, Sonnenberg gave notable parties which brought old-money New York together with show business luminaries. [5] The building was listed as a contributing property to the Gramercy Park Historic District in 1966. [1]
Sonnenberg died in 1978, and the house was auctioned to Baron Walter Langer von Langendorff, the owner of Evyan Perfumes, although Dr. Henry Jarecki also bid on it. Von Langendorff sold it to fashion designer Richard Tyler and his wife, Lisa Trafficante, in 1995 for $3.5 million. [2] [5] After sprucing up the property, it was put on the market in January 2000 and sold to Jarecki in December 2000 for $16.5 million. [2] Jarecki, a psychologist and entrepreneur was reported to plan to use the mansion as both a home and the headquarters for his family foundation. [2]
The mansion in its current incarnation has 37 rooms, 18,000 square feet (1,700 m2) of space, a separate caretaker's apartment, numerous bedrooms, bathrooms, guest suites, and sitting rooms, a drawing room, a library, two kitchens, a wine cellar and the ballroom on the top floor, which had been renovated by Tyler. [2]
Stuyvesant Fish was an American businessman and member of the Fish family who served as president of the Illinois Central Railroad. He owned grand residences in New York City and Newport, Rhode Island, entertained lavishly and, along with his wife "Mamie", became prominent in American high society during the Gilded Age.
Turtle Bay is a neighborhood in New York City, on the east side of Midtown Manhattan. It extends from roughly 43rd Street to 53rd Street, and eastward from Lexington Avenue to the East River's western branch. The neighborhood is the site of the headquarters of the United Nations and the Chrysler Building. The Tudor City apartment complex is next to the southeast corner of Turtle Bay.
Stuyvesant Town–Peter Cooper Village, sometimes shortened to StuyTown, is a large post–World War II private residential development on the east side of the New York City borough of Manhattan. The complex consists of 110 red brick apartment buildings on an 80-acre (32 ha) tract stretching from First Avenue to Avenue C, between 14th and 23rd Streets. Stuyvesant Town–Peter Cooper Village is split up into two parts: Stuyvesant Town, south of 20th Street, and Peter Cooper Village, north of 20th Street. Together, the two developments contain 11,250 apartments.
Lexington Avenue, often colloquially abbreviated as "Lex", is an avenue on the East Side of Manhattan in New York City. The avenue carries southbound one-way traffic from East 131st Street to Gramercy Park at East 21st Street. Along its 5.5-mile (8.9-kilometer), 110-block route, Lexington Avenue runs through Harlem, Carnegie Hill, the Upper East Side, Midtown, and Murray Hill to a point of origin that is centered on Gramercy Park. South of Gramercy Park, the axis continues as Irving Place from 20th Street to East 14th Street.
Gramercy Park is the name of both a small, fenced-in private park, and the surrounding neighborhood that is also referred to as Gramercy, in Manhattan in New York City.
Stuyvesant Square is the name of both a park and its surrounding neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan. The park is located between 15th Street, 17th Street, Rutherford Place, and Nathan D. Perlman Place. Second Avenue divides the park into two halves, east and west, and each half is surrounded by the original cast-iron fence.
Pete's Tavern, located at 129 East 18th Street on the corner of Irving Place in the Gramercy Park neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, is a pub food restaurant and one of several drinking establishments each claiming to be the oldest continuously operated tavern in the city.
The Harry F. Sinclair House is a mansion at the southeast corner of East 79th Street and Fifth Avenue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. The house was built between 1897 and 1899. Over the first half of the 20th century, the house was successively the residence of businessmen Isaac D. Fletcher and Harry F. Sinclair, and then the descendants of Peter Stuyvesant, the last Director of New Netherland. The Ukrainian Institute of America acquired the home in 1955. After the house gradually fell into disrepair, the institute renovated the building in the 1990s. The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) and was named a National Historic Landmark in 1978.
Sidney Vanuxem Stratton was an American architect born in Natchez, Mississippi, but whose practice was entirely in New York City. Stratton is now scarcely known, but he was one of the first American architecture students at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, along with H. H. Richardson and Richard Morris Hunt, in whose office he worked in the 1870s before establishing his own practice.
Henry George Jarecki is a German-born American academic, psychiatrist, entrepreneur, producer and philanthropist.
810 Fifth Avenue is a luxury residential housing cooperative on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City.
The Dorilton is a luxury residential housing cooperative at 171 West 71st Street, at the northeast corner with Broadway, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. The 12-story building, designed by local firm Janes & Leo in the Beaux-Arts style, was built between 1900 and 1902 for real estate developer Hamilton M. Weed. The Dorilton is a New York City designated landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Willard D. Straight House was the New York City residence of Willard Dickerman Straight. The mansion is at 1130 Fifth Avenue on the northeast corner with East 94th Street. It is located in the Carnegie Hill neighborhood on the section of Fifth Avenue known as Museum Mile and is one of only three houses remaining on Fifth Avenue in single-family occupancy, 925 and 973 Fifth Avenue, near 74th and 79th Street, respectively.
Benjamin Sonnenberg, Jr. was an American publisher and the founder of the literary magazine Grand Street, which he began as a quarterly journal in 1981.
The East 17th Street/Irving Place Historic District is a small historic district located primarily on East 17th Street between Union Square East and Irving Place in the Union Square neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It was designated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission on June 30, 1988, and encompasses nine mid-19th century rowhouses and apartment buildings on the south side of East 17th Street, from number 104 to number 122, plus one additional building at 47 Irving Place just south of 17th Street.
257 Central Park West is a co-op apartment building on the southwest corner of 86th Street and Central Park West in the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. It was designed by the firm of Mulliken and Moeller and built by Gotham Building & Construction between 1905 and 1906.
The Stuyvesant Apartments, Stuyvesant Flats, Rutherfurd Stuyvesant Flats or simply The Stuyvesant, was an apartment building located at 142 East 18th Street between Irving Place and Third Avenue in the Gramercy Park neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It is considered to be the first apartment building in the city intended for the middle class, who previously were not used to living in apartments, which were initially called "French flats" at the time.
18 Gramercy Park is a 19-story residential building in Manhattan, New York City, United States. Built as a hotel in 1927 and designed by the architectural firm Murgatroyd & Ogden, it was a women's temporary residence owned by The Salvation Army from 1963 to 2008. It was then known as the Parkside Evangeline. In 2010, The Salvation Army sold the building to Eastgate Realty for US$60 million. The investors were the Zeckendorf family and Israeli billionaire Eyal Ofer. In 2012, the building was redesigned by Robert A.M. Stern Architects as a luxury 16-unit condominium building.
Hotel des Artistes is a historic residential building located at 1 West 67th Street, near Central Park West, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Completed in 1917, the ornate 17-story, 119-unit Gothic-style building has been home to a long list of writers, artists, and politicians over the years.
Stuyvesant Farm, also known as the Great Bowery, was the estate of Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch director-general of the colony of New Netherland, as well as his predecessors and later his familial descendants. The land was at first designated Bowery No. 1, the largest and northernmost of six initial estates of the Dutch West India Company north of New Amsterdam, used as the official residence and economic support for Willem Verhulst and all subsequent directors of the colony.
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