The James B. Duke House is a mansion at 1 East 78th Street, on the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. The building was designed by Horace Trumbauer, who drew heavily upon the design of in Bordeaux. Constructed between 1909 and 1912 as a private residence for businessman James Buchanan Duke and his family, the building has housed the New York University (NYU)'s Institute of Fine Arts since 1959.
The house has a limestone facade and was designed to look like a two-story structure from the street. An attic story is placed behind the balustrade on roof level. The house generally contains long windows and high ceilings and has a portico in the middle of the 78th Street facade. The interior of the first floor is designed in the French Classical style and consists of four large corner rooms, used as classrooms, which surround a main entrance hall. The second floor originally contained eight bedrooms while the third floor had servants' quarters; these later served respectively as a library and offices. The basement had service rooms, later converted into laboratories.
The James B. Duke House replaced the 1880s-era Henry H. Cook mansion. When Duke died in 1925, his wife Nanaline and daughter Doris continued to live in the house until 1958, when they donated the house to NYU. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated 1 East 78th Street as an official landmark in 1970, and it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1977.
Site The James B. Duke House is at 1 East 78th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It is on the northeast corner of 78th Street to the south and Fifth Avenue to the west, directly across Fifth Avenue from Central Park. The land lot covers with a frontage of on Fifth Avenue and on 78th Street. The house is largely rectangular in plan, except at the northeast corner, where the house protrudes slightly on the north side. Nearby sites include the Payne Whitney House and the Isaac D. Fletcher (now Harry F. Sinclair) House to the north, the Stuyvesant Fish House to the east, and 960 Fifth Avenue to the south.
The city block between Fifth Avenue, Madison Avenue, and 78th and 79th Streets was part of the Lenox family farm until 1877, when Marcellus Hartley bought the block for $420,000. The railroad magnate Henry H. Cook acquired the site for $500,000 in 1880. and owned it for the remainder of the 19th century. Cook built a house on the southwest corner of the block in 1883. The house was made of sandstone and marble. During that house's construction, Cook had not set a deadline or a fixed budget; when he came across any features he disliked, he ordered contractors to remove or modify these features. This contributed to the house's stature as one of the area's most lavish dwellings. Cook intended the block to house first-class residences, not high-rises, and only sold lots for the construction of private dwellings. By the early 1910s, the value of the land had increased to $6 million. Through the early 2000s, the block of Fifth Avenue remained largely intact, compared to other parts of Fifth Avenue's "Millionaire's Row".
Architecture The James B. Duke House was designed in the French Classical/Louis XV style by Horace Trumbauer. Built for the family of James Buchanan Duke, it has served as a building for the New York University (NYU)'s Institute of Fine Arts since around 1959. Trumbauer drew heavily upon the design of French architect Etienne Laclotte's , built in 1773 in Bordeaux. Because Trumbauer did not have a formal architectural education, he delegated the details of his designs to other architects working for him. In particular, the Duke mansion was one of the early works of African American architect Julian Abele. The mansion itself measures and is freestanding, being surrounded by open space on all sides.
Comparing the house to the Edward S. Harkness House at 1 East 75th Street, Paul Goldberger wrote that the Duke House seemed "overwhelming". Conversely, Henry Hope Reed Jr. praised the house's "monumentality in what is, for New York, a low building". The historian Mosette Broderick wrote that the Duke House was reminiscent of the Fletcher House on the same block.
Facade
The facade is made of limestone, which is designed in a fine quality that looks like marble. From the street, the house was designed to look like a two-story structure. An attic story is placed behind the balustrade on roof level. To make the Duke mansion appear as an overscaled version of the Château Labottière, Trumbauer hid the service rooms in the basement and the servants' bedrooms in the attic. The Duke House occupies nearly its entire land lot. On Fifth Avenue, the house is slightly recessed behind an areaway. A stone balustrade separates the areaway from the sidewalk. There is a yard on the north side of the house, separating it from the Payne Whitney House at 972 Fifth Avenue directly to the north. Another alley on the east side, measuring wide, separates the Duke House from a neighboring building at 3 East 78th Street. The Duke House's facade contains seven vertical bays of openings on the south, facing 78th Street, and four bays of openings on the west, facing Fifth Avenue. The house generally contains long windows and high ceilings to give it the impression of a large mansion.
The main entrance is in the center bay on 78th Street. It contains a double-story portico flanked by vertical pilasters with quoins. The entrance is recessed within the portico and is flanked by Doric-style columns on the ground floor. It is accessed by a short flight of steps with a balustrade that contains low relief panels. Inside the opening is a set of double doors in a round-arched opening, with stone bas-reliefs in the spandrels at the top corners. The keystone above the door has a console bracket with a relief depicting a woman's head. At the second story is a balcony with an iron railing and Ionic-style columns. There is a French window behind the balcony, topped by a carved swag and a panel with a swag and ribbons. The top of the portico contains a triangular pediment supported by corbels, within which is a tympanum containing carved figures.
The remainder of the facade is similarly ornate. Each corner of the facade contains pilasters with quoins, similar to those surrounding the portico. The windows at the ground floor are surrounded by banded moldings and have balustrades at the bottom. The balustrades of each ground-story window are visually connected by band courses within the spaces between each window. On the second story, each window is surrounded by a banded molding and has a wrought-iron window guard at the bottom, as well as a carved swag atop the window. The spaces between the windows on both stories are made of stone panels in low relief, while a band course separates the floors horizontally. The facade is topped by a large entablature and a cornice supported by modillions. The entablature has talon and egg-and-dart moldings as well as a blank frieze; at the portico, the entablature projects slightly from the facade.
Interior The house has 30 or 32 rooms in total. According to the New York City Department of City Planning, the Duke House has a gross floor area of . However, media sources have described the house as having . Originally, numerous artworks were displayed throughout the house. These included Portrait of Raphael Franco (Thomas Gainsborough, 1780), Portrait of Lord Peter Burrell, Lord Gwydyr (Gainsborough, 1787), and Gentleman in a Red Coat (Henry Raeburn, 1800). Many of the house's original architectural records are in the collection of Duke University Libraries.
First floor The communal interiors on the first floor, which guests could visit, were designed in the French Classical style. On each side of the main entrance were reception rooms for guests. These were converted respectively to a development office to the west and a directors' office to the east. On the ground floor, the Duke mansion was designed around a grand entrance hall, officially known as the Marica Vilcek Great Hall. This main hall contains stone reliefs, which are carved to resemble classical figures such as putti. The floor is made of polychrome tile. On the northern wall is a U-shaped marble staircase leading to the second floor. North of the staircase is a kitchen. A safe was originally placed next to the pantry. East of the main staircase, an additional stair leads up to the second floor and down to the basement, while an elevator leads to all stories. The elevator was originally outfitted in rose and gold decoration.
The former public rooms, including the dining, drawing, and music rooms, were arranged at the four corners of the ground floor. They retain many of the original furnishings and decorations. The library was in the southwest corner, the dining room in the northwest, the music room in the northeast, and the drawing room in the southeast. Because of the shape of the house, the music room was slightly larger than the other corner rooms. The former music room has arched openings with swags, fluted pilasters with capitals, relief panels, and an architrave with festoons and a cornice; many of the decorations are gilded. The music room has an arched opening with a small performers' balcony that contains an iron railing. , the Loeb Room, Marble Room, Lecture Hall, and Seminar Room respectively occupy the southwest, northwest, northeast, and southeast rooms.
Other stories The second floor had eight large bedrooms. Also on the second floor was a linen room, dress closet, clothes rooms, a pantry, and bathrooms. Some of the rooms were dedicated almost exclusively to clothing when the house was used as a residence. The attic had twelve suites for servants, in addition to another linen room and a sewing room. The Institute of Fine Arts has a library in the second-floor bedrooms and faculty offices in the attic. Two stairs connect the second and third floors, one on either side of a skylight on the north side of the house.
Service rooms such as the laundry, kitchen, and servants' dining room were placed in the basement. The kitchen and servants' dining room was placed in the western side of the basement, while the laundry was in the northeast corner. Other rooms such as a pantry, storerooms, and linen rooms were arranged around a corridor connecting the kitchen and dining room with the laundry. Servants' suites were placed on smaller corridors leading off the main basement corridor. When the Institute of Fine Arts took over the building, these rooms were converted to laboratories. , the basement has several offices. A fire stair replaced a dumbwaiter to the kitchen, but the basement furnishings remain largely intact. From the basement, another staircase and the elevator lead to the sub-basement, which has a multi-purpose room and more offices.
History
James Buchanan Duke was born in North Carolina in 1856 and became a wealthy businessman during the 19th century. He grew his family's tobacco enterprise significantly, and he became president of the American Tobacco Company in 1890 after several U.S. tobacco companies merged. James and his brother Benjamin Newton Duke moved the company's headquarters to New York City in the 1900s. By the middle of the decade, James Duke was worth $50 million, owned four properties across the eastern U.S., and lived at Benjamin's house at 1009 Fifth Avenue. James moved to 4 East 52nd Street in what is now Midtown Manhattan in 1907, shortly before he married Nanaline Inman. Even after the American Tobacco Company was dissolved by antitrust action in 1911, Duke remained a wealthy businessman, organizing competing companies and founding the Southern Power Company (later Duke Power) and Duke University.
Construction