A Gramercy Park townhouse once owned by the late Oleg Cassini — Jackie O’s favorite fashion designer who was linked romantically to some of the world’s most beautiful women — is about to go back on the market with a million-dollar price slash. It will ask $7.99 million.
The four-story, 20-foot-wide spread, at 135 E. 19th St., first hit the market for $13.95 million last year, before the price was cut to $8.95 million. It was last purchased at auction for $5 million in 2022.
“It’s a bad-ass Gothic party house, with something in every corner — from gargoyles to an imported fountain and wallpaper in the closet,” said listing broker and reality TV star Eleonora Srugo, of Douglas Elliman, who will be representing the home with Elliman’s Bernardo Metsch.
“Someone should restore it to its glory,” she added.
This is where Cassini, a notorious playboy, held glamorous parties and dressed his famous clients, who also included Marilyn Monroe and Grace Kelly, his former fiancée.
“If you love old-school New York, this house has a great history,” Srugo said.
The 6,798-square-foot dwelling comes with six bedrooms, 5.5 baths, stained glass on every floor.
Once known as the Joseph B. Thomas House — named for a 19th-century sugar mogul’s philanthropic heir — it appears to be a Greek Revival home, built in the 1870s. Thomas, who traveled to Russia to bring back and breed “royal” Russian Borzoi dogs, hired English-born architect Frederick Junius Sterner to remodel the home and transform it into a “Gothic fantasy … [with] crouching gargoyles and a carved coat of arms,” according to the Daytonian in Manhattan blog.
Design details also include decorative stone inlays, and carved paneling and arches. An entry foyer opens with a Flemish pattern stone floor and leads to the living room, which was once called the “Italian Room,” with a barrel-vaulted ceiling, filigree plasterwork, wood-paneled walls and a large stone fireplace.
A garden boasts a working fountain and areas for interior plantings under a glass solarium roof. There’s also a chef’s kitchen, a prep kitchen, a dumbwaiter, two staircases and a laundry center, along with a large dining room, and a brick-and-tile wine cellar and tasting room.
The upstairs bedroom floors include ensuite baths and dressing rooms.
Thomas himself was also known for hosting parties, including on St. Patrick’s Day, when all decorations were green. He also held charity dance galas to raise money for Europe in World War I, sent cows to Europe after the war and planted maple trees on the block along with the first gingko tree — and was president of the Gramercy Park Association, according to the Daytonian in Manhattan blog.
But current and past listings also claim that the home has an unusual origin story. They say it was actually built 400 years ago in Amsterdam, and that the 17th-century property was dismantled and shipped first to New York’s Upper West Side, where it was reassembled in 1845, and then moved again to Gramercy Park in 1910, where it was “completed” by Sterner. If true, it would appear to be the city’s only 17th-century Dutch home transplanted to New York by ship to be reassembled here in the 19th century.
And yet, there are some who believe it. “We felt pretty confident about the 400-year-old claims when we did the research. It was pretty well documented,” said an insider with knowledge of a past listing.
As for the current listing, Srugo told Gimme Shelter it may be more likely that some of the home was shipped to New York and not all of it.
Like the house, the late Cassini — who died at age 92 in 2006 — also has an interesting backstory. He was the grandson of a Russian-Italian count and the tsar’s last ambassador to China before the Russian Revolution.
He also dressed Hollywood stars including Joan Fontaine and Joan Crawford. As he told the New York Post in 1961, “My philosophy is this: Do not tamper with the anatomy of a woman’s body; do not camouflage it. I don’t want every woman to look like a little boy.”