It was built at the turn of the century as a wedding present from the bride’s mother. The bridegroom, by one historian’s account, had connections to an Ivy League institution (Princeton) and a reputation for traveling in the same circles as women from families synonymous with wealth (Vanderbilt), which explains why the bride’s mother had a town house to give away.
Now the house, at 11 East 62nd St., is for sale. Perhaps a Vanderbilt would not blink at the $30 million asking price. That works out to more than double the highest recorded sale price for a Manhattan town house and 800 times what the current owner, a nonprofit foundation that conducts job aptitude tests, paid for it in the 1940s.
But architectural historians and real estate experts say that Fabbri house, as it is known, is set apart by the fact that it has been left alone over the years: It is in original condition.
And while run-of-the-mill, eight-figure houses have been renovated, they rarely come with original 1890s mahogany paneling in a 25-by-41-foot dining room, ornate plaster ceilings in the ballroom, walk-in safes or coal bins that have not been touched in generations.
“It’s like the clock stopped here 70 years ago and never started up again,” the broker, Sharon Baum, said as she ascended the sweeping staircase leading to the second floor, where the banister supports a pair of Louis XIV-style bronze candelabra with Cupids nearly six feet high.
Baum, a senior vice president of the Corcoran Group, a Manhattan real estate agency, said the house looks essentially as it did when when the bridal couple–Ernesto G. Fabbri and Edith Shepard, a great-granddaughter of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt–moved in after their honeymoon.
From the beginning, the house was a family affair. It was designed by the architectural firm Haydel & Shepard. The second partner, August Dennis Shepard Jr., was related to the bride’s mother.
But the bridal couple did not live there long. In 1916, they headed uptown, to a new house. Perhaps 62nd Street had become too trendy: the year they left, the New York Social Register declared that their old block, between Fifth and Madison Avenues, was the social center of New York City.
Now, the house provides elegant quarters for the staff of the Johnson O’Connor Research Foundation, though the fireplaces are covered with wooden boards, sealing out drafts.
“They all work,” Baum said of the fireplaces. “They just closed them up.”
The same cannot be said of the pipe organ on the second floor.
“It worked until the leather straps disintegrated,” she said. The window-rattling pedal notes have not been played in generations.
Even the back stairs are impressive, considering that they were meant for servants.
They have wood-paneled walls and look like the turn-of-the-century dormitories at Princeton, though Ben Primer, Princeton’s archivist, said he could find no record of Fabbri as a graduate or a member of the faculty there.
Baum said a new owner should expect to spend big bucks, even by Vanderbilt standards, to paint the house and bring it up to date. After all, the plumbing and electrical lines, like the plaster work, have not been modernized.
“I’ll tell you the estimates I’ve heard: between $5 million and $10 million,” Baum said. “It’s 22,000 square feet.”
Thomas McAveeney, the president of the Johnson O’Connor Foundation, said that even before Baum called, the foundation’s trustees had put the house on the market, listing it quietly with several other brokers after the trustees were advised that they could get $20 million for it.
“We had no idea it was worth that,” he said. “The trustees said, `Let’s ask $25 million.’ “
