Historic Manhattan Townhouse Asks $35 Million

A 40-foot-wide townhouse on Manhattan’s Upper East Side hit the market Thursday for $35 million, propelling it right up towards the top end of the city’s townhouse market.

Nestled between Park and Madison avenues on East 74th Street, the 12,425-square-foot home has 12 bedrooms, 10 wood-burning fireplaces, an elevator, a library and a gym with a resistance pool, according to the listing with David Kornmeier and Scott Harris of Brown Harris Stevens who could not be reached for comment.

But perhaps its most valuable feature—in space-starved Manhattan where a single parking spot at a new condo building like Tribeca’s star-studded 443 Greenwich can set a buyer back up to $1.5 million—is its private two-car garage.

The current owner bought the property in 1982, city records show, although it’s not known how much they paid.

Built in 1871 as two separate homes on a row of 11 townhouses, the pair of properties was combined and the facade reconstructed in 1920 for George Whitney, the first president of J.P Morgan, according to a Landmarks Preservation Commission report.

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In 1948, Dorothy Hearst Paley, a New York society darling and the subject of a Henri Matisse sketch, bought the home. Ms. Paley, who was married to John Randolph Hearst and William S. Paley, recruited the famed modernist architect William Lescaze to provide interior alterations and remodeling of the front steps, the report said.

The home is on the same block as 33 East 74th Street, a new condo building redeveloped from a collection of townhouses owned by the Whitney Museum, where the most expensive unit is asking $48 million.

Of the more than 2,000 townhouse listings in New York City, the home is the 13th most expensive. The highest priced on the market is an $84.5 million houseon East 62nd St. The 15,000-square-foot property was built in 1903 by John H. Duncan, the architect behind Grant’s Tomb.