Celeste Godoy Photography
- A New York City mansion built in the Gilded Age Beaux-Arts style is on the market.
- The 11,500-square-foot building has seven floors, including a cellar and a roof.
- It has passed through many hands over the years, including those of an exiled Russian prince.
While HBO’s “The Gilded Age” might be on hiatus — and the real Gilded Age ended 125 years ago — properties scattered across New York City are keeping the era alive.
Among them: this seven-bedroom, 14-bathroom limestone mansion nestled between two high-rise buildings on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
The 11,500-square-foot property, which is listed with Douglas Elliman agent Lydia Sussek, hit the market in April for a cool $29.75 million.
But it’s been around much, much longer. It was commissioned in 1901 by builder Joseph A. Farley, who hired the architecture firm Janes and Leo. Eventually, it ended up in the hands of another real estate developer, Samuel Borchard, who owned the property until his death in 1930, according to his New York Times obituary.
In the 1940s, the exiled Russian prince Sergei Belosselsky-Belozersky purchased the building and made it the headquarters of a nonprofit for Russian immigrants to New York called the House of Free Russia, The Real Deal reported.
It remained as such for 50 years, and was left in a state of somewhat disrepair, until it was sold and refurbished in 1999. The buyer, Randall Rackson, told Mansion Global that the house was an “empty building without a roof” with “rats and pigeons inside it.” His renovation was extensive, and he has lived there ever since.
But now he’s ready to downsize, he told The New York Post.
While many Gilded Age mansions were demolished, this one remains — here’s what the lavish townhouse looks like today.
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