Benjamin N. Duke House
Historic house in Manhattan, New York / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Benjamin N. Duke House, also the Duke–Semans Mansion and the Benjamin N. and Sarah Duke House, is a mansion at 1009 Fifth Avenue, at the southeast corner with 82nd Street, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It was built between 1899 and 1901 and was designed by the firm of Welch, Smith & Provot. The house, along with three other mansions on the same block, was built speculatively by developers William W. Hall and Thomas M. Hall. The Benjamin N. Duke House is one of a few remaining private mansions along Fifth Avenue. It is a New York City designated landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Benjamin N. Duke House | |
Location | 1009 Fifth Avenue at East 82nd Street Manhattan, New York City |
---|---|
Coordinates | 40°46′43.6″N 73°57′43.8″W |
Built | 1899-1901[1] |
Architect | Welch, Smith & Provot[1][2] |
Architectural style | Beaux-Arts[1] French Renaissance (interior) |
NRHP reference No. | 89002090[3] |
NYCL No. | 0805 |
Significant dates | |
Added to NRHP | December 7, 1989 |
Designated NYCL | February 19, 1974[4] |
The house, located across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Fifth Avenue building, consists of seven stories and a basement. The exterior of the house is built in the Beaux-Arts style, while the interior was originally designed in the French Renaissance style. The ground floor is clad in limestone, while the facade of the upper floors is made of brick; the mansion is capped by a copper mansard roof. The facade is divided vertically into six bays on 82nd Street and three bays on Fifth Avenue. The main entrance on 82nd Street leads to a stairway that rises through the building. Originally, the dining room, music room, parlor and kitchen were on the second floor, while the other stories contained bedrooms. The house was divided into three apartments in the 1990s, and it had 12 bedrooms and 14 bathrooms by the 2010s.
American Tobacco Company chairman Benjamin N. Duke acquired the house in April 1901 and moved there in 1907. Benjamin's brother James bought the house in 1907 and moved to the James B. Duke House in 1912. The mansion then served as the residence of Benjamin Duke's son Angier Buchanan Duke until 1919, when Angier's sister Mary Lillian Duke and her husband A. J. Drexel Biddle Jr. moved in. After Mary's death in 1960, her daughter Mary Semans took over the house with her family. The building became a city landmark in 1974 after the Semans family refused to sell the building to developers; it was renovated in the 1980s and again in the 1990s. Semans sold the house in 2006 to businessman Tamir Sapir. Mexican telecom magnate Carlos Slim bought the house in 2010 and tried to resell it in 2015 and 2023.