Felix Warburg Mansion (Now part of the Jewish Museum)

History and architecture

By the early 1900s, Fifth Avenue facing Central Park had earned the nickname of "Millionaires' row." An astonishing panoply of millionaires' mansions had been constructed in which architectural elegance was equaled only by stylistic variety. French Gothic chateaux stood cheek by jowl with Italian Renaissance palazzo, Louis XVI 'hotel particuliers' adjoined. Georgian town houses, exuberant Baroque facades abutted restrained classical ones; and, yet, the overall effect remained utterly American. The mansions proclaimed the independence of mind, and proud ambitions of the captains of industry, mercantile magnates, financial wizards, and robber barons who had commissioned them; they flaunted their opulence and displayed un-abashed enthusiasm for the beauty money can create. "Millionaires' row" was a quintessential manifestation of America's Gilded Age.

Few of Fifth Avenue's grand mansions have survived, and thus those remaining have become all the more worthy of preservation. The Felix Warburg Mansion is among the very finest left to us -- an exceptionally handsome example of the chateauesque Francois I style, constructed in 1906-1908 for Felix and Frieda Warburg, and designed by C.P.H. Gilbert. At the turn of the century Gilbert was one of New York's best known and most prestigious architects, "a kind of l'architect du roi for American Millionaires."