Andrew Carnegie Mansion

History and architecture

When Andrew Carnegie commissioned the firm of Babb, Cook and Willard to design a new residence for him on upper Fifth Avenue, he envisioned it as being "the most modest, plainest and most roomy house in New York". The house and its surrounding gardens, completed early in 1903, comprise one of the grandest residential-complexes in the City, regardless of his stated desire for modesty. Its architecture, reminiscent of an English Georgian country seat, is, however, more restrained than many of its New York contemporaries which were influenced by styles from France and Italy.

The area in which the house is located, which became known as Carnegie Hill soon after the erection of the mansion, was once part of the Village of Nieuw Haarlem, established by the Dutch in 1658. The Carnegie Hill area did not, however, develop as rapidly as did neighborhoods to the south and north of it... It, in fact, remained semi-rural in character until the early 1880s when speculative builders began erecting brownstone residences for those with "modest fortunes." This sudden growth resulted Jointly from the general move uptown of middle-class residents and the completion, in 1881, of the-portion of the Third Avenue "El" which provided the area with a rapid transit connection to-midtown and lower Manhattan.

Relatively modest residences continued to be built throughout the neighborhood until the turn of the century, when Andrew Carnegie erected his new mansion at No. 2 East 91st Street, much to the amazement of wealthy property owners, residing below the Seventies on Fifth Avenue. Carnegie, who was more concerned with open spaces than fashionable neighborhoods, decided upon this location largely because it provided an area large enough for a garden.

Soon after Carnegie's venturesome move, however, the well-to-do, business and professional people began building in the area, a trend which continued for the next thirty years. Andrew Carnegie was, in fact, directly responsible for the development of the neighborhood, having purchased, as an investment, considerable property near the proposed site of his mansion. One of Carnegie's new neighbors was George L. McAlpin, who in 1902-03 erected a house at No.

9 East 90th Street. Seventeen years later, Mrs. Carnegie purchased this residence for their daughter, Mrs. Roswell Miller.