Woolworth Opulence for $90 Million

By Sarah Kershaw, New York Times

The market for multimillion-dollar residences has picked up lately, but you don’t see this very often: a mansion built in the early 1900s for a daughter of the dime store magnate Frank Winfield Woolworth is being put up for sale for $90 million. It can also be rented, for $210,000 per month.

The mansion is one of three homes Mr. Woolworth had built for his daughters at 2, 4 and 6 East 80th Street. The middle one, a 35-foot-wide French Gothic town house with a limestone facade and more than 18,000 square feet of space, is being sold by the family of Lucille Roberts, the fitness entrepreneur, who was living there when she died in 2003.

A French Gothic mansion with seven floors and more than 18,000 square feet of space.Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times A French Gothic mansion with seven floors and more than 18,000 square feet of space.

According to the listing, being handled by Paula Del Nunzio of Brown Harris Stevens, the interior spaces, which the owners renovated in a prewar style, create the “sensation of immense scale.”

To wit: The seven-floor house with elevator includes a paneled library the width of the structure; a formal dining room that can seat 50; a parlor floor with 14-foot-high ceilings; 10 bedrooms, 11 and a half bathrooms; and 3 kitchens.

Ms. Del Nunzio, who has brokered some of the most expensive residential deals in the city, said it was unusual for a turn-of-the-last-century mansion to come on the market having already been renovated. Records show that the property sold for $6 million in 1995, when it was being used as a men’s gym, according to Ms. Del Nunzio.

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