One of NYCs final Gilded Age buildings sells for $42M but is set for heartbreaking demolition

More than a century ago, New York’s wealthiest families built palatial mansions along West 57th Street, filling them with the splendor of the dazzling Gilded Age.Now, one of the last survivors of that vanished world has changed hands for a staggering $42 million — and could soon make way for a new monument to Manhattan’s immense wealth.The historic Schieffelin-Bowne House at 35 W.57th St., a five-story Beaux-Arts mansion dating to 1891, has been sold to New York-based developer Sedesco, giving the firm essentially the final piece of a yearslong assemblage for a soaring luxury skyscraper on Billionaires’ Row.The Soloviev Group sold the property in a deal that closed Oct.

29, according to city property records.The acquisition represents essentially the final property needed to complete Sedesco’s sprawling development site, according to a source familiar with the project.With the land now largely assembled, the developer is expected to unveil updated plans in the coming months, the source added.As recently as March, Sedesco had demolished neighboring buildings at 37–47 W.57th St.

but had yet to file construction plans.For the mansion, however, the future is far less certain.Its story begins in an age when the city’s grandest fortunes were measured not in glass towers rising above the clouds, but in limestone facades, ornate interiors and stately homes lining Manhattan’s most fashionable avenues.Built in 1891, the mansion was a wedding gift reportedly commissioned by Margaret Vanderbilt Shepard for her daughter, Maria Louisa Vanderbilt Shepard, and her new husband, William Jay Schieffelin.The residence was a testament to the extraordinary wealth of the Vanderbilt dynasty, whose railroad empire helped shape the city itself.The newlyweds lived there until 1899, when the mansion passed into the hands of Samuel W.Bowne, a prominent businessman and philanthropist whose family roots in New York stretched back to the 17th century, according to historian Tom ...