Andrew Carnegie Mansion ca. 1901
The Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum at 2 East 91st Street is a renowned museum and institution, the only of its kind in the United States, born of a long history and connection between philanthropy and industry. The landmarked building is an exemplary bit of ornate, turn-of-the-20th-century architecture, and today we explore its history and ties to the Village.
In 1898, Andrew Carnegie and his wife Louisa purchased land for their family’s home “far north” of the center of New York City and where they had previously been living. This new space would allow them a mansion of much greater size, along with a private garden. Designed by the firm Babb, Cook & Willard, the Carnegie family moved into their grand new home in 1902. The mansion put its neighborhood on the map — the lower 90s west of Lexington Avenue is still called Carnegie Hill to this day.
The Georgian style Mansion boasted a modern steel-frame construction, the first private residence in the United States to use this method. It was technologically advanced, too: multiple electric Otis elevators, a fully electrified laundry, an extremely sophisticated air conditioning system capable of heating, cooling, and humidifying individual rooms, and a cellar coal car that traveled over a miniature train track to transfer fuel from a storage bin to enormous twin boilers were installed.
The mansion had 64 rooms on five floors, the top of which was for servants’ quarters. There were multiple libraries, parlors, sitting rooms, bedrooms, halls, pantries, and skylights. The family library on the second floor, known also as the Teak Room, was made entirely of intricately carved Teak wood, from India or Myanmar.
Andrew Carnegie spent 20 years in his mansion before he died in 1919. His wife, Louise Carnegie, remained in the mansion until she died in 1946. Louise left the mansion to the Carnegie Corporation, which leased the building to Columbia University’s School of Social Work in 1949. The school remained in its grand home until the mid-1960s. In 1966, the Carnegie Mansion was named a national historic landmark, bestowing upon it a great honor, but not protecting it from potential demolition. Like many great Historic New York City buildings in the 1960s, when tastes and uses were rapidly changing, the Carnegie Mansion’s fate was in doubt. Some worried it would go the way of Penn Station and other no-longer-used mansions, succumbing to the wrecking ball.
