The Willard D. Straight House was the

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

residence of Willard Dickerman Straight. The mansion is at 1130 Fifth Avenue on the northeast corner with East 94th Street. It is located in the

Carnegie Hill Carnegie Hill is a neighborhood within the Upper East Side, in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. Its boundaries are 86th Street on the south, Fifth Avenue (Central Park) on the west, with a northern boundary at 98th Street that continue ...

neighborhood on the section of Fifth Avenue known as Museum Mile and is one of only three houses remaining on Fifth Avenue in single-family occupancy, 925 and 973 Fifth Avenue, near 74th and 79th Street, respectively.

History

The house was designed by the firm of Delano & Aldrich in the neo-Georgian style and was completed in 1915. The ground floor of the house is organized around a circular hallway in the 18th-century style topped by a dome, with a patterned black and white marble floor. The Straight family also owned a complementary building at 162 East 92nd Street, also designed by Delano & Aldrich, that was used as a garage. The second and third floors of this building contained apartments for staff. Straight died during the

influenza epidemic of 1918 The 1918–1920 influenza pandemic, commonly known by the misnomer Spanish flu or as the Great Influenza epidemic, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus. The earliest documented case was ...

and his widow Dorothy Whitney Straight continued to live in the house for several years with her children. She remarried and moved to England but continued to own the house until 1927. The house was sold to Judge Elbert H. Gary, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the

United States Steel Corporation United States Steel Corporation, more commonly known as U.S. Steel, is an American integrated steel producer headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with production operations primarily in the United States of America and in several countries ...

(who had recently sold his home at 956 Fifth Avenue which was demolished to make way for a new apartment building), who died in the house the same year. The next owner was Harrison Williams, a utilities investor, and his wife Mona. In 1952, the house was sold to the

Audubon Society The National Audubon Society (Audubon; ) is an American non-profit environmental organization dedicated to conservation of birds and their habitats. Located in the United States and incorporated in 1905, Audubon is one of the oldest of such orga ...

for use as their headquarters, which they called the Audubon House. The Society left in 1971 and, in 1974, the building was sold to the

International Center of Photography The International Center of Photography (ICP), at 79 Essex Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City, consists of a museum for photography and visual culture and a school offering an array of educational courses and programming. ...

for use as a new museum devoted exclusively to photography with photo‐journalist

Cornell Capa Cornell Capa (born Kornél Friedmann; April 10, 1918 – May 23, 2008) was a Hungarian American photographer, member of Magnum Photos, photo curator, and the younger brother of photo-journalist and war photographer Robert Capa. Graduating from Imr ...

as executive director. In 2000, as ICP was consolidating at their Midtown Manhattan location they sold the building for $17.5 million to hedge fund founder

Bruce Kovner Bruce Stanley Kovner (born 1945) is an American billionaire hedge fund manager and philanthropist. He is chairman of CAM Capital, which he established in January 2012 to manage his investment, trading and business activities. From 1983 through 2 ...

for use as a personal residence. The noise and debris associated with Kovner's years long conversion of the Federal-style building back to an "opulent private residence" reportedly caused his neighbors dismay and was written about in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' in 2003.

References

External links

The Straight Residence
at Beyond the Gilded Age {{Coord, 40, 47, 11.8, N, 73, 57, 22.9, W, region:US-NY, display=title 1915 establishments in New York (state) Delano & Aldrich buildings Fifth Avenue Houses completed in 1915 Houses in Manhattan New York City Designated Landmarks in Manhattan Upper East Side Gilded Age mansions

History

See also

References

Further reading

External links