Mrs. James B. Duke Residence ca. 1979

When Horace Trumbauer, the Philadelphia architect, was asked to design a town house for the Duke family, his firm chose as the model a house in Bordeaux, modifying its proportions to suit the site. Some of the handsomest buildings ever erected in New York were designed by his firm. They included Eleanor Widener's house, now razed, at 901 Fifth Avenue; the Herbert N. Straus house at 9 East 71st Street; the Wildenstein Galleries at 19 East 64th Street; and the old Duveen Galleries, which once stood at the northwest corner of Fifth Avenue and West 56th Street. Many of his designs were directly inspired by those of the French architect Jacques Ange Gabriel.