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, make sure to hit that subscribe button so you
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