Evan Joseph/ Sotheby’s International Realty
The House of Cassini — an eight-story Gilded Age mansion on the Upper East Side that once housed the atelier of Jackie Kennedy’s favorite fashion designer, Oleg Cassini, in its atrium — has received another massive $5 million price chop.
It’s now asking $49.5 million — down from its $65 million ask just four months ago. It was most recently asking $54.5 million last month, which was down from its $58.5 million price tag in August.
The late Cassini, the grandson of a Russian-Italian count and the tsar’s last ambassador to China before the Russian Revolution, was known as a playboy. He was once engaged to Grace Kelly, whom he described as a “top top girl” and had dated women including Marilyn Monroe, whom he described as a “little polo pony,” according to a 2010 Vanity Fair article.
The Beaux-Arts beauty, at 15 E. 63rd St., was designed by renowned architect John H. Duncan.
The architect was famed for creating Grant’s Tomb — the massive domed mausoleum in Morningside Heights. It’s the final resting spot for General Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th US president elected after he led the fight against the Confederacy to win the Civil War, and his wife, Julia.
The East 63rd Street mansion has also been the site of its own 30-year civil war.
In 1984, Marianne Nestor Cassini — whose secret marriage to Oleg Cassini from 1971 until his death in 2006, at age 92, was only revealed after Oleg passed away — and her sister, Peggy Nestor, bought the mansion for an unknown sum. Back then, it had been carved up into at least seven rental units. The sisters planned to transform it back into a single-family mansion, but they had a rent-stabilized hold-out.
Celebrated interior designer Thomas Britt had moved into a massive 3,000-square-foot triplex in the building in 1971, when he was paying a mere $700 a month — and he refused to leave.
By 2017, Britt was paying $3,025 a month. At the time, a similar market-rate unit would have fetched at least $15,000 a month. The sisters and Britt were still duking it out in housing court when, in 2018, Britt dropped the battle and moved out — after the sisters accused him of mainly living in the Hamptons, according to The Post.
The following year, in 2019, a mortgage lender filed a foreclosure action. But Nestor filed for bankruptcy a day before the slated sale.
By then, Cassini’s widow was in another war and was even jailed twice for refusing to follow court orders in a tortured legal battle over Oleg’s $55 million fortune. According to papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court by a public administrator, Marianne was accused of “malfeasance, misconduct and self-serving abuses,” and stalling on settling the estate for so long that Oleg’s daughters by legendary actress Gene Tierney — Christina and Daria — both died without getting their rightful portion of his asset.
They passed away penniless, according to reports. Thanks to Christina’s challenge, Marianne was stripped of her role as administrator of the estate — and her four children carried on the fight for their inheritance.
Oleg Cassini’s grandson, Alexandre Belmont — Christina’s son — also successfully sued to force the sale of another townhouse that Oleg owned and where Marianne was residing in Gramercy Park. That townhouse, at 135 E. 19th St., ultimately sold at auction for $5 million in 2022. The following year, it was back on the market for $13.95 million. The price was reduced to $11.95 million last year. The estate also includes an Oyster Bay property at 313 McCouns Lane — the subject of Marianne’s eviction and a court-ordered sale — and another property in Norwalk, Conn., on Point Road.
By 2022, Marianne Cassini had also filed her own $350 million lawsuit against Nassau County officials whom she accused of trying to loot the $55 million estate through “corrupt” and “illegal” actions, according to The Post’s reports.
While the court cases remain unresolved, the East 63rd Street mansion went on the market last summer. Not many Gilded Age mansions remain as well preserved as that gem, as many were torn down in the 1920s. This one is a “glistening survivor, one of the few remaining and most architecturally intact of its Gilded Age splendor on the Upper East Side,” notes the listing.
The limestone home, just off Central Park between Fifth and Madison avenues, was built 123 years ago for financier and philanthropist Elias Asiel. It still boasts original details, including a marble staircase, 14 fireplaces, floral garlands, arched French windows, a circular dining room, wood paneling, moldings with a cartouche in each corner of the ceiling, white marble and herringbone floors.
At 25 feet wide, the 18,000-square-foot mansion comes with seven bedrooms, eight full bathrooms, four half baths and an elevator. There’s also a wood-paneled library, a gym, a conservatory and three terraces along with a sitting room with double-height ceilings and a copper mansard roof. The eight-story property includes two levels below ground.
“It’s one of the most beautiful townhouses in New York, with the highest quality of craftsmanship, materials, imagination and taste,” said listing broker Louise Beit of Sotheby’s International Realty. “It’s really a masterpiece by Duncan, one of the finest architects at the turn of the century. The boiserie, exquisite ceiling cartouches and sculptures, bold moldings along the edge of the ceiling — in some places there are three tiers of moldings that are quite exceptional and so confident.”
The rooms, she added, “are full blown experiences, not just live-in walk-through spaces.”
Details also include 17-foot-high ceilings on the “drawing room” floor, which includes the library and landing with a musician’s gallery overlooking it. There’s also an oval dining room with wood paneling. The offering also features “one of the most architecturally significant limestone facades embellished with sculptural garlands over the windows,” along with the floor-to-ceiling windows and Central Park views.
The two below-ground levels are original. The first — “Sub Level 1” — may have been the original kitchen with a large room and fireplace and 11-foot-high vaulted ceilings with ceramic tiles, Beit said — while “Sub Level 2” is currently an office and could be converted to a pool.
The sale is subject to court approval, the listing notes.