The William Starr Miller House is a mansion at 1048 Fifth Avenue, on the

Upper East Side The Upper East Side, sometimes abbreviated UES, is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 96th Street to the north, the East River to the east, 59th Street to the south, and Central Park/Fifth Avenue to the wes ...

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

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 ...

. Prior to

Miller A miller is a person who operates a mill, a machine to grind a grain (for example corn or wheat) to make flour. Milling is among the oldest of human occupations. "Miller", "Milne" and other variants are common surnames, as are their equivalent ...

’s development of the property, the site was home to David Mayer (died in 1914), a founder of the David Mayer Brewing Company and a friend of

Oscar S. Straus Oscar Solomon Straus (December 23, 1850 – May 3, 1926) was an American politician and diplomat. He served as United States Secretary of Commerce and Labor under President Theodore Roosevelt from 1906 to 1909, making him the first Jewish United ...

History

It was originally constructed for the industrialist

William Starr Miller William Starr Miller II (October 26, 1856 – September 14, 1935) was a prominent New York industrialist and real estate operator. Early life Miller was born in New York City on October 26, 1856. He was a son of George Norton Miller I (1805–18 ...

. Miller hired the renowned New York-based, Beaux-Arts architectural firm Carrere and Hastings to design a six-story

Louis XIII style The Louis XIII style or ''Louis Treize'' was a fashion in French art and architecture, especially affecting the visual and decorative arts. Its distinctness as a period in the history of French art has much to do with the Regent, regency under w ...

townhouse for himself and his family, to be located in Manhattan at 1048 Fifth Avenue (on the southeast corner at East 86th Street). The work was completed in 1914. Miller's daughter Edith Starr Miller married the widowed Lord Queenborough in July 1921, in the music room. Miller died at the house in 1935 and his widow continued to live there until her death in 1944. Cafe Sabarsky 1057

After Mrs. Miller's death, the townhouse was occupied by

Grace Vanderbilt Grace Graham Vanderbilt ( Wilson; September 3, 1870 – January 7, 1953) was an American socialite. She was the wife of Cornelius Vanderbilt III. She was one of the last Vanderbilts to live the luxurious life of the "head of society" that her pred ...

, wife of

Cornelius Vanderbilt III Brigadier General Cornelius "Neily" Vanderbilt III (September 5, 1873 – March 1, 1942) was an American military officer, inventor, engineer, and yachtsman. He was a member of the Vanderbilt family. Early life Born in New York City to Cornelius ...

, and then by the

YIVO Institute for Jewish Research YIVO (Yiddish: , ) is an organization that preserves, studies, and teaches the cultural history of Jewish life throughout Eastern Europe, Germany, and Russia as well as orthography, lexicography, and other studies related to Yiddish. (The word ' ...

. Purchased in 1994 by art dealer and museum exhibition organizer Serge Sabarsky and cosmetics billionaire Ronald S. Lauder, the building was fully renovated by German architect

Annabelle Selldorf Annabelle Selldorf (born 1960) is a German-born architect and founding principal of Selldorf Architects, a New York City-based architecture practice. She is a fellow of the American Institute of Architects (FAIA) and the recipient of the 2016 AIA ...

and restored to its original state. It contains the

Neue Galerie New York The Neue Galerie New York ( German for "New Gallery") is a museum of early twentieth-century German and Austrian art and design located in the William Starr Miller House at 86th Street and Fifth Avenue in New York City. Established in 2001, ...

, which opened on November 16, 2001.

History

References

Further reading