The Payne Whitney House is a historic building at 972 Fifth Avenue, south of 79th Street, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It was designed in the High Italian Renaissance style by architect Stanford White of the firm McKim, Mead & White. Completed in 1909 as a private residence for businessman William Payne Whitney and his family, the building has housed the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States since 1952.
The house has a five-story-tall gray-granite facade that is curved slightly outward. Each story is horizontally separated by an entablature. The interiors of the Payne Whitney mansion were designed in 16th- and 17th-century Renaissance styles. The first floor includes a rotunda that was decorated with an artwork attributed to Michelangelo, as well as the Venetian Room, a reception room that William Payne Whitney's wife Helen Hay Whitney particularly valued. Since 2014, the second and third stories have housed a French-language bookstore, Albertine Books.
The Whitney house was commissioned in 1902 by William's uncle Colonel Oliver Hazard Payne as a wedding gift. Construction took so long that, in the meantime, the couple's two children John (Jock) and Joan were born and Stanford White was killed. After the house's completion, William and Helen lived there until their respective deaths in 1927 and 1944. Jock Whitney sold the house in 1948 to a developer who converted it into apartments. The French government bought the building four years later. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated 972 Fifth Avenue as an official landmark in 1970. Various renovations have been conducted at the house over the years, including in the 1990s and 2010s.
Site
The Payne Whitney House is at 972 Fifth Avenue in the Upper East Side neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It is on the east side of Fifth Avenue, directly across from Central Park, midblock between 78th and 79th Street. The land lot covers with a frontage of on Fifth Avenue and a depth of . Nearby sites include the Harry F. Sinclair House to the north, the Stuyvesant Fish House to the east, and the James B. Duke House and 960 Fifth Avenue to the south. There is a yard on the south side of the house, separating it from the James B. Duke House. The Payne Whitney House was also built with a rear entrance on 79th Street, measuring wide.
In the late 19th century, the site was owned by railroad magnate Henry H. Cook, who had acquired all lots on the city block between Fifth Avenue, Madison Avenue, and 78th and 79th streets. Cook had acquired the site for $500,000 and built a house on the southwest corner of the block in 1883. 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 Payne Whitney House was designed in the high Italian Renaissance style by Stanford White of McKim, Mead & White. It was commissioned by Colonel Oliver Hazard Payne for his nephew William Payne Whitney and William's bride Helen Hay Whitney. The house was developed concurrently with the neighboring Henry Cook House at 973 Fifth Avenue; the two houses were among the last residences White designed before his death in 1906. According to Henry Hope Reed Jr., the inspiration for the Payne Whitney House's design is unclear, though the Pesaro Palace in Venice may have been one inspiration.