Big Ticket | Sold for $42 Million
Sitting proud and pretty on the rarefied stretch of Fifth Avenue quaintly known as Millionaire’s Row in the early 20th century — but ostensibly the province of billionaires only in this one — an ornate Stanford White-designed mansion that sold for $42 million was the biggest sale of the week, according to city records.
The 15,225-square-foot limestone showplace at 973 Fifth Avenue, built in the Italian Renaissance palazzo style, had been on the market for a year. It was originally listed at $49 million.
The dwelling retains the original layout and decorative period details personally seen to by White, who was murdered a year before its completion in 1907 by the jealous husband of a former lover. The town house and its neighbor at 972 Fifth Avenue, which was built as a wedding gift for Payne Whitney and now houses the French Consulate General, are two of the last Beaux-Arts residences White designed.
Henry H. Cook, the big spender who commissioned the mansion, specifying that it be the tallest town house in a neighborhood that just happened to belong to him, died in 1905. Mr. Cook, who made his fortune in banking and railways, owned the entire block between Fifth and Madison Avenues at 78th and 79th Streets. But he never set foot in his finished dream home; its first occupants were his heirs.
The most recent master of the mansion, the businessman Victor Shafferman, acquired it at the bargain price of $600,000 in 1977 and lived in it for several decades; he died in 2009.
The property was bought anonymously, and eponymously, through a limited-liability company: 973 Fifth.
[Corcoran SVP Leighton Candler represented the buyer.]
Copyright © 2012 The New York Times Company. Reprinted with Permission. Tina Fineberg/The New York Times.