Manhattan, a beacon of towering skyscrapers, urban energy, and the pulse of the modern
world. But long before the skyline was defined by steel and glass, it was the domain of gilded
age glamor. Hi everyone, Ken here, welcome to This House Let’s travel back to a time,
before Manhattan was dominated by super thin skyscrapers, to explore the forgotten
palaces of New York’s elite and uncover the largest homes ever built in Manhattan.
In the Gilded Age, a time of unimaginable wealth and unparalleled extravagance, Manhattan was home
to some of the world’s most magnificent mansions – monuments to an era where ambition knew no bounds.
With very few taxes, and rampant corruption, barons of industry were able to secure
their legacies in Manhattan by building limestone palaces full of artisan details.
Without further ado, lets begin exploring Manhattan’s largest houses.
If you are familiar with the surviving Gilded Age Mansions of Manhattan,
you might think that our list will include houses such as the Carnegie Mansion,
but what we are exploring today make his house look humble by comparison.
In 1882, Charles Tiffany began construction on a 57 room mansion at Madison and 72nd street.
It was meant to house his entire family, including his son, celebrated artist Louis Comfort Tiffany
who collaborated with the esteemed architecture firm of McKim, Mead, and White to create the
towering abode. Louis had the entire upper portion of the house to himself where he would
spend endless nights tinkering with glass in his cavernous, 3 story tall studio. In 1933, while
living in his Manhattan Mansion, Louis Comfort Tiffany passed away. His heirs sold the house to
a developer, and 3 years later it was demolished and replaced with an apartment building.
Next we will travel to the Upper East Side where we will find the Otto H. Kahn House still standing
at the corner of 5th ave and East 91st Street. The 80 room, Palazzo style mansion took 4 years
to finish as sculptors and master wood workers worked around the clock from 1914 to 1918.
When it was completed, it became one of the largest private residences in the US and included
housing for more than 40 live-in staff. Entering the home, you would travel down the driveway,
guarded by a doorman, to arrive in the interior courtyard. Here you would find a network of
limestone stairs trimmed with balustrade leading you between colonnaded arcades. Once inside,
the long halls with high ceilings dwarfed the human scale with each surface embellished in
heavy stone relief work. But there are still larger, and more ornate mansions to be found.
Traveling further down 5th avenue, we will arrive at the former site of Mrs. Astor’s double mansion.
After demolishing her Brownstone to replace it with the Astoria Hotel, she moved to Millionaire’s
Row where, in 1894, she constructed a mansion for both herself, and her son, John Jacob Astor IV.
She hired architect, Richard Morris Hunt,
to design a duplex, the likes of which New York City had never seen before.
The chateauesque style double mansion featured a limestone façade with a steeply pitched roofline.
The interiors were finished out with gilded wall panels and elaborate ceiling murals.
But most impressive of all the rooms, was her famous ballroom where she would host events for
“The 400” who were considered to be the only 400 people in high society suitable for a ballroom.
While she had placed a limit on the number of people who would be allowed in her ballroom,
in reality it could have comfortably hosted around 1200 guests in the one room alone.
After slipping down the marble stairs in her grand foyer, her health began to decline.
Upon her passing, the house passed to her son who married the two sides of the
duplex into one mega mansion, enlarging the rooms and cladding them in marble.
When the remodel was complete, Mr. Astor hosted a dinner with a recorded 6,508 guests in attendance.
John Jacob ended up going down with the RMS Titanic and the house passed through
his family until his son, Vincent Astor sold it. It was then demolished in 1926 and soon
replaced by the Congregation Emanu-El of New York which stands in its place to this day.
Old money might have had a tight grip on New York’s High Society, but no amount of
exclusivity could keep the Nouveau Riche from claiming their stake in Manhattan.
On the Upper West Side’s Riverside Drive, steel magnate, Charles Schwab built a 75
room mansion from 1902 to 1906. The lavish interiors were ornamented to no end with each
surface containing elaborate artisan work. When he built the mansion, he had hoped to start a trend,
attracting wealthy people to the neighborhood, but that never happened and the neighborhood
filled in with, what was at the time, middle class housing. When the great depression hit,
Schwab lost his fortune and attempted to sell the house, but no one would buy it.
He simply abandoned his Upper West Side chateau and moved into a small
apartment where he died with little more than a few dollars to his name.
Upon his death, the house was left to the city to serve as the Mayor’s home, however, the mayor at
the time found the home to be far too grand for a public servant and declined the donation. It sat
abandoned for over a decade, slowly decaying until it was torn down in 1948 and replaced
by an affordable housing apartment building, somewhat ironically named, the “Schwab House.”
Next we’ll head down to Midtown where one of the largest homes in New York once stood.
The Vanderbilt Triple Palace was constructed in 1882 by William Henry Vanderbilt to be a home
for himself and 2 of his daughters’ families. It took over 600 workers to construct the mansion
with 60 European sculptors tirelessly engraving the façade for more than one and a half years.
On William’s side of the triplex, he had 58 rooms for himself, each filled with fine antiques,
European tapestries, and paintings by the greats. A few years after the house was finished,
William’s art collection had outgrown the house and he built a massive art gallery as an addition
which could host 3,000 guests. For a short while, he opened his private art gallery to the public,
but quickly reverted it back into a private gallery. In 1885, after not even 5 years in
the house, William passed away and the triple palace passed to his children who
were forbidden from selling any portion of it. In 1905, wealthy industrialist, Henry
Clay Frick began making a presence for himself in Manhattan. After making several attempts to
purchase the Triple Palace, the Vanderbilt heirs agreed to rent a portion of it to him.
As time went by and Frick’s wealth continually increased and the Vanderbilts continued to decline
his offers to purchase the palatial estate, Frick decided to build his own, larger mansion up the
street at the corner of 70th and 5th Avenue, facing central Park. With a footprint of 1.26
acres, his grand, limestone clad mansion rose 3 stories with several sub levels below ground.
Not only did the estate take up an entire city block, the house was positioned 75 feet back from
the street, giving it the largest lawn on 5th avenue. Pulling through the nearly 2 story port
cochere, we can wind our way through the courtyard and begin exploring Frick’s palace. The mansion
was constructed to accommodate his own, extensive art collection with a massive art gallery.
He had entire, centuries old rooms disassembled in Europe and reassembled in his home, such as
the Fragonard room. Entire halls were clad in limestone with columns stretching to reach the
over height ceilings. As we come into view of the stair hall, we will pay special attention to the
intricate relief work decorating the ribbed groin vaults. The grand staircase wrapped around a niche
which contained a pipe organ, and at the stair landing we can see its pipes decoratively framed
and imagine them bellowing through the stone block halls. The mansion continued with large,
wood paneled rooms filled with rare books and art, such as the library. The living hall was staged
with antique furniture arranged conversationally while artisan plasterwork decorated the ceiling
and intricate carvings decorated the wood panels. And in the dining room, the table
could be extended with leaves to host elaborate dinner parties. Even with all of these lavish and
luxurious rooms, the Frick Mansion, which still stands today, was not the largest.
Nearby, in 1897, William A. Clark started construction of a towering, 121 room mansion
in the beaux arts style. The limestone clad mansion included a staggeringly tall
tower which was meant to overlook all of central park, which was in-turn, said to be visible from
anywhere in central park. For its construction, Clark had a private railway built directly to
the construction site to bring in stone and coal from his quarries. Upon its completion,
it received sharp criticism and was viewed as an eyesore, earning it the nic-name, “Clark’s Folly.”
Entering the vertically oriented mansion, we will pass nearly 30 feet from the front door, through
the vestibule to arrive at the stair hall where a sweeping staircase, carved from solid marble,
will take us upstairs to the main living area. First we would be directed to the reception room
to await our host. From here, we might be welcomed into the art gallery, where one of, if not the
largest skylight in a single family house of the time, illuminated paintings by the greats. To one
end of the gallery, the pipe organ dominated an entire wall, set within a marble trimmed niche.
The dining room, with a mix of wood panels and limestone walls left no surface unadorned. But
perhaps no room was more intricately detailed than the Petit Salon, with its delicately gilded
lattice ceiling. In addition to the surviving pictures, there was a 90 foot long Gothic Library,
25 guest suites complete with their own bathrooms, and 35 individual servants quarters.
The house, which took 14 years to build, only stood for 16 years. It was torn down in 1927 upon
Clark’s passing and replaced with an apartment building which still occupies the lot to this day.
Originally built in 1883, Cornelius Vanderbilt II felt insecure about the size of his mansion.
His neighbors along 5th avenue were building larger and larger homes, and not wanting to
be outdone, he purchased every house on his block and had them demolished. He then hired architect,
Richard Morris Hunt, to expand his mansion so that it would fill the entire block.
The 125,000 square foot Chateauesque Style mansion boasted 130 rooms spread throughout
its 6 stories above ground, not including any of the space in the several sub basements.
The rambling mansion contained great halls, grand staircases, and perhaps more gold in its
gilded rooms than any of the neighboring palaces. Cornelius enjoyed the mansion for only 13 years
before passing away, at which point the chateau was left to his wife Alice. She inherited a trust
fund with more than enough money to maintain the chateau and their similarly sized cottage,
the Breakers, in Newport, Rhode Island. By the 1920s, nearly all of the Gilded
Age mansions in the neighborhood had been torn down and replaced with skyscrapers.
Alice wanted to keep the house, but as time passed by, it became less and less affordable to do so.
In 1926, she sold the house for the price of the land which sat below it,
fetching a cool 7 million dollars, or the modern equivalent of about 120,000,000 dollars.
Before it was introduced to the wrecking ball, she opened the house for the public to tour and
essentially gave away any and all architectural elements that people could strip from the mansion
and repurpose. Today, the only remnant of the largest house ever built in Manhattan
is the front gate of the Vanderbilt Chateau which stands as the 105 street entrance to Central Park.
As we stand amidst the towering skyscrapers of modern Manhattan, it is important to
remember the rich tapestry of history that paved the way for the city we know today.
These once-magnificent mansions, with their grandeur, opulence,
and larger-than-life histories, remind us of an era when architectural grandiosity was a symbol of
status, wealth, and power. Although many of these architectural marvels have been lost to time,
their legacy lives on, whispering tales of the Gilded Age's affluence and ambition.
As we took our tour, did you have a favorite house? Let me
know down below in the comments section. And while you’re there,
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