Home of the Week: One of New York’s Grandest Gilded Age Mansions Lists for $65 Million
A piece of New York’s architectural history has officially hit the market in the form of a grand Gilded Age mansion. This Upper East Side property, located at 15 East 63rd Street and listed for $65 million, was built in 1901 for financier Elias Asiel and is one of the few remaining Gilded Age mansions in New York City. While many of these homes were demolished in the 1920s, this opulent home has remained largely intact and reflects a time when the world’s industrial elite spared no expense in the design and embellishment of their homes.
The Beaux Arts-style residence spans a whopping 18,000 square feet and was designed by renowned architect John H. Duncan, whose commissions include several residences in Manhattan, estates in Greenwich, and most famously, the tomb of Ulysses S. Grant.
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The glistening limestone mansion, which takes its cues from the architecture of Paris, has a total of seven bedrooms, 12 full bathrooms, and four powder rooms. Adding to its appeal, among its neighbors are other surviving Gilded Age mansions that once belonged to prominent New York families, including the Woolworths, Bloomingdales, Brokaws, and Hammersteins.
The mansion was also once the home and studio of the late fashion designer Oleg Cassini, who famously styled Jackie Kennedy, Joan Fontaine, Joan Crawford, and other wealthy women throughout the world. When the influential designer moved in, the home was configured as a multi-unit apartment building, and today, Cassini’s wife, Marianne, and his sister-in-law, Peggy Nestor, own the property.
The 25-foot-wide mansion, which runs 100 feet deep, features steel beam construction and spans eight levels. Its limestone exterior features delicately carved floral garlands, oversized arched French windows, a copper mansard roof, Juliet balconies, and a trio of terraces that include two rooftop patios with Central Park and city skyline views.
With ample reception rooms, the home was certainly built for entertaining, and the soaring ceilings, oversized windows, and incredible ornamentation, such as reliefs, motifs, and intricate moldings, make it feel almost like a royal palace.
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Beyond the 46-foot by 22-foot white-marble entrance gallery and lavish winding marble staircase, there’s a dazzling circular dining room with one of the home’s 14 fireplaces. The second floor features the museum-like gallery, with astonishing ceiling heights of nearly 17 feet, as well as a wood-paneled drawing room festooned with an intricate cartouche in each corner of the ceiling. A conservatory just off the drawing room spills out onto a small terrace.
The third floor comprises a sitting room/media room with an attached bathroom, and the spacious primary suite, which includes a sitting room or dressing area between the bedroom and bathroom. The upper floors hold a handful of bedrooms, a couple of sitting rooms, and several kitchenettes, remnants of when the house was used as a multifamily building. The top floor opens to a pair of rooftop terraces that offer panoramic city and park views. Elsewhere are a library, a gym, and two subterranean levels with development potential.
Louise Beit of Sotheby’s International Realty—East Side Manhattan Brokerage holds the listing.
Click here for more photos of 15 East 63rd Street.
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