The Otto H. Kahn House is a mansion at 1 East 91st Street, at Fifth Avenue, in the Carnegie Hill section of the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, New York, US. The four-story mansion was designed by architects J. Armstrong Stenhouse and C. P. H. Gilbert in the neo-Italian Renaissance style. It was completed in 1918 as the town residence of the financier and philanthropist Otto H. Kahn and his family. The Convent of the Sacred Heart, a private school, owns the Kahn House along with the adjacent James A. Burden House, which is internally connected. The mansion is a New York City designated landmark and, along with the Burden House, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The mansion's facade is made of French limestone and is rusticated on the first and second stories, with large archways on the first floor. The house has French- and Italian-style interiors and is divided into front and rear sections, with an oval entrance hall connecting the floors. The first floor originally contained reception spaces while the second floor had spaces including a study, library, theater, drawing room, and dining room. On the top stories, there were 15 bedrooms with en suite dressing rooms and bathrooms.
Andrew Carnegie purchased the site in 1898 to protect the value of his nearby mansion, but he did not sell it until 1913, when Kahn bought the plot. After the house was completed, the Kahns hosted various events there, splitting their time between their 91st Street residence and Oheka Castle on Long Island. The family was seeking to sell the house by the early 1930s. After Otto Kahn died in 1934, the Convent of the Sacred Heart bought it and converted the house into classrooms, a library, and offices. The house was renovated in the late 20th century, though many of the interior spaces have been preserved.
Site The Otto H. Kahn House is at 1 East 91st Street in the Carnegie Hill section of the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, New York, US. It stands on the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and 91st Street, facing Central Park to the west. The site measures wide on Fifth Avenue to the west and wide on 91st Street to the south. During the 20th century, the house occupied the north end of Fifth Avenue's Millionaires' Row. On the same city block to the east are the James A. Burden House (which is internally connected with the Kahn House), the John Henry Hammond House, and the John and Caroline Trevor House. The Felix M. Warburg House, containing the Jewish Museum, is on the block to the north. Just south of the Otto H. Kahn House is the Andrew Carnegie Mansion at 2 East 91st Street, housing the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. The townhouses on 11, 15, and 17 East 90th Street and the Spence School are located on the same block as the Carnegie Mansion, southeast of the Kahn House.
Architecture The architects J. Armstrong Stenhouse and C. P. H. Gilbert designed the house at 1 East 91st Street for the family of financier Otto Hermann Kahn in the neo-Italian Renaissance style. It is four stories high with a basement and a protruding rooftop dormer, and the house measures about to its roof. The house was modeled after the Palazzo della Cancelleria of the Papal Chancellery in Rome. One 20th-century architectural writer stated that the house was inspired exclusively by 16th-century Italian architecture.
Facade
Front elevations
The house was largely built of French limestone from St. Quentin, with Caen stone used on the lowest two stories. In general, the facade has lead-came glass or zinc-came glass windows. The exterior faces of each window frame are made of molded limestone, while the interior faces are made of wood. On the lowest portion of the facade is a water table that wraps around the southern elevation on 91st Street and the western elevation on Fifth Avenue.
Above the water table, the first story of the facade is rusticated, with deep joints crossing the facade horizontally, and contains arched windows recessed between iron grilles.; The use of rusticated blocks and iron grillwork was intended to make the structure appear like a Renaissance palazzo. On 91st Street, there are two larger archways with paneled wooden doors. A short indoor driveway (also described as a porte-cochère) connects the two archways and contains the house's main entrance.; There is a niche at either end of the driveway, as well as a coffered ceiling, which is made of stucco. At the extreme eastern end of the southern elevation is a rusticated wall, with service areas behind the walls.
The second story is designed like a piano nobile and is rusticated, albeit with smoother limestone and shallower joints compared with the first floor. Each window is designed as a French window with leaded glass panes and wood frames behind a small balustrade. Above the second-story windows are pediments that are alternately segmentally arched and triangular, and there are vertical pilasters between each of the windows. The third and fourth stories have a smooth facade, except for a horizontal string course that connects the fourth-floor windows. There are cornices above the third-floor windows, while the fourth-floor windows have simpler frames and are proportionally smaller. Above the fourth floor is a protruding cornice with modillions, which is surrounded by a balustrade.
Rear elevations and courtyard Portions of the northern and eastern elevations are visible from the street and are similar to the western and southern elevations. The eastern elevation has a Renaissance-style tower topped by a water tank. On the roof are several rooms that are set back slightly from the facade. Visible from the roof was a small garden house, a fountain, and a porch, which one critic from 1919 described as "a glimpse of Italy, in more intimate guise".
A courtyard is on the northern side of the site and extends into the center of the building, allowing rooms in the middle of the house to be illuminated by natural light. The stone facade of the courtyard is decorated with elements such as arches and stairways; this was a contrast to the lightwells of similar mansions, which did not have decorative facades. There is a partially enclosed one-story terrace to the north of the house, which has a rusticated facade. This terrace is accessed by steps leading down from a loggia, which surrounds the courtyard on two sides. The courtyard's southeastern corner has a water tank and a staircase tower. At the rear of the house's northeast corner is an annex for the Convent of the Sacred Heart's lower school, which has a limestone facade.
Features The house has a floor area of and was one of Manhattan's largest private houses, as well as one of the largest in the U.S. It has been cited as containing a total of 65, 66, or 80 rooms. Each of the main floors spanned about . The private driveway was originally guarded by a doorman, and there was an oak-paneled library and spacious reception room.Rascoe, Burton. "Contemporary Reminiscences." Arts & Decoration 20, (1924): 12. Original photographs of the more formal rooms taken during the Kahns' occupancy show them decorated in an 18th-century French and Italian style; many of the original decorations remain intact.The first through third stories are connected to the Burden House's rear rooms via a glass passageway that is set back from the street. Since the floor levels are uneven, the connection is slightly sloped.
Basements and first story There are two basement levels and five above-ground stories. The second basement had electrical generators and a heating plant. The first basement had servants' living quarters, a kitchen, and a pantry, as well as 40 bedrooms for servants. These spaces also contained walk-in freezers and full height marble control panels with brass hardware. The control panels operated the house's vacuum system and dumbwaiters.
The entrance leads to an entry hall with limestone walls supporting a plaster groin vault. This hall is decorated with pediments, niches, and cornice moldings, and the interior courtyard is visible from the northern end of the hall. There is a grand staircase on the western wall (designed in a Florentine Renaissance style) and a smaller staircase and elevator on the eastern wall. The elevator originally had a mural because Otto Kahn's wife Addie was claustrophobic. A stone tower with a concealed window allowed Kahn to watch his visitors enter the main hall. When the Kahns lived in the house, there was a bowl in the middle of the entry hall, where guests dropped their visiting cards.
The rest of the first floor was used as reception spaces. As originally arranged, there was a smaller hall leading west of the entry hall, which in turn connected to three reception spaces on the first floor. The Convent of the Sacred Heart school, which took over the house in 1934, converted these spaces into offices, meeting spaces, and ancillary spaces.
Second story The second-story rooms, which include the family's former study, library, theater, drawing room, and dining room, were intended as the most ornate in the house. The spaces have ceilings measuring close to high. On the south side of the floor, from east to west, are the dining room, French salon and art gallery. The dining room was built with wood paneling, while the salon is decorated in the Louis XVI style with a vaulted ceiling and a large marble fireplace. The gallery was used as a reception room; a spiral staircase rises from one corner of the art gallery, linking to a sitting room on the third story. The three rooms on the south were accessed by a central foyer. which faces the courtyard to the north and features a fireplace and two limestone stairways to the upper stories. Also on the first floor are a library room to the west, a cloistered loggia north of the courtyard, an Adam style ballroom to the northeast, and a butler's pantry to the east. Kahn's library, which originally had furniture with custom-made locks and keys, had a leather-topped gift and two Dutch artists' portraits.
The Convent of the Sacred Heart has modified some of these rooms over the years, although many of the original architectural details remain intact. For example, the dining and drawing rooms were merged into a single chapel room, the study and library served as the school's middle and upper school libraries, and the theater was converted into the school's performance room. The school built shelves into the walls of the family library room, which could accommodate 500 books. There is also a ballroom, which is described as having a vaulted ceiling with a crystal chandelier. These spaces can be rented out for events and film shoots.
Upper stories On the third and fourth stories, there were 15 bedrooms, each with en suite dressing rooms and bathrooms. The third story initially featured the Kahn family's bedrooms. Otto Kahn had a bedroom, bathroom, dressing room, and office to himself, while his wife Adelaide (Addie) had a bedroom, bathroom, and boudoir. There was also a sitting room shared by husband and wife. The Kahns' children slept on the fourth floor. Whenever the Kahns' children invited guests over, a servant escorted these guests to an elevator that went directly to the fourth floor. The Convent of the Sacred Heart has converted both levels to classrooms. Kahn's former fourth-story study serves as a library for the school.
The fifth story included servants' bedrooms. These rooms had vaulted ceilings, glass walls, and doors leading to a rooftop deck. There was also a penthouse overlooking Central Park, with an artist's atelier on the roof. This penthouse was designed to resemble an Italian garden house and had a terrace with a balustrade. The Convent of the Sacred Heart's lower-school annex, at the northeast corner of the house, includes a library, classrooms, and offices. This annex also has a connection to the Burden House's rear rooms.
History