Fifth Avenue’s “Millionaire’s Row”<\/a> as a stockbroker’s statement mansion in 1901, the stately limestone home was subdivided into apartments throughout the ’60s and ’70s.<\/p>\nAnd before his death in 2006, Cassini sketched wardrobes for longtime client Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis by the light of a towering window spanning the six-story home’s two topmost floors.<\/p>\n
As the new buyer prepares to move in as early as next month, let’s take a look at the stunning rooms and tumultuous history of 15 East 63rd Street.<\/p>\n
The 125-year history of the House of Cassini begins and ends with unwelcome intrusions.<\/p>\n
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The limestone facade of the House of Cassini, a 1901 Gilded Age mansion on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.<\/p>\n
Evan Joseph for Sotheby’s International Realty <\/p>\n
For all its serene style, the story of the House of Cassini begins and ends with a violent forced entry.<\/p>\n
Its first owner, a millionaire broker and banker, was bludgeoned and robbed by armed burglars who broke in soon after his Beaux-Arts beauty was built.<\/p>\n
A century later, its most recent owner \u2014 Cassini’s 85-year-old sister-in-law, Peggy Nestor \u2014 would be physically pulled from the home by federal Marshals, who busted open the brass front door to enforce a bankruptcy judge’s 2024 eviction order.<\/p>\n
“They put me on the street in a robe!” Cassini’s widow, Marianne Cassini, also in her 80s, told the judge of being evicted along with her sister and their niece.<\/p>\n
The sisters battled in the courts for a decade to manage rising debts.<\/p>\n
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A fireplace mantle featured a photo of fashion designer Oleg Cassini with longtime client Jacqueline Kennedy when she was First Lady.<\/p>\n
Evan Joseph <\/p>\n
For the past decade, the two sisters have battled in state and federal court to keep the home they purchased together in 1984, 12 years after Marianne’s secret marriage to the designer (the union was revealed only after Cassini’s death). Nestor, Cassini’s sister-in-law, took sole title in 2016, according to court papers.<\/p>\n
The sisters continue to wage a tandem, last-ditch battle against the eviction and the bankruptcy judge’s final 2024 order that the home be sold to satisfy more than $30 million of Nestor’s mortgage debts and liens.<\/p>\n
In the two years since the eviction, the home’s sale price plummeted \u2014 from $65 million under Sotheby’s International Realty, to $39.5 million under its latest listing by Brown Harris Stevens, to the current $34.5 million purchase agreement.<\/p>\n
First stop on our look inside: an ornate and unusual vestibule.<\/p>\n
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The House of Cassini entryway features an unusual vestibule of curving marble, brass, and glass.<\/p>\n
Evan Joseph for Sotheby’s International Realty <\/p>\n
Before diving into the home’s tumultuous history and tranquil interior, it’s worth pausing at the front door, where the original vestibule still greets visiting guests.<\/p>\n
Built of curving marble, brass, and glass, the unusual structure served as an airlock \u2014 a buffer against the cold in a home warmed by 14 fireplaces.<\/p>\n
Marble, glass, and brass bend together to frame the vestibule.<\/p>\n
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A close-up of the Cassini mansion vestibule shows its turn-of-the-century beauty.<\/p>\n
Evan Joseph <\/p>\n
In the summer, the vestibule helps keep in the central air conditioning, a much later and controversial addition.<\/p>\n
In 2006, next-door-neighbor Neil Diamond sued Nestor, saying her new rooftop cooling unit illegally added 13 feet to the height of her building.<\/p>\n
The “Sweet Caroline” and “Song Sung Blue” singer sought $2 million in damages for the obstruction of views from his terrace. They settled for an undisclosed sum in 2010.<\/p>\n
The 1901 mansion was a wealthy stockbroker’s statement home, steps from Manhattan’s “Millionaire’s Row.”<\/p>\n
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The first floor has white marble floors and a sweeping marble staircase.<\/p>\n
Evan Joseph for Sotheby’s International Realty <\/p>\n
The home’s story begins with Wall Street stockbroker Elias Asiel, who purchased 15 East 63rd Street in 1885 as a new Victorian brownstone.<\/p>\n
Asiel had grander plans. He hired one of the top architects of the day, John H. Duncan, to reimagine the 25-foot-wide property as a limestone-clad mansion to rival any on the nearby stretch of Fifth Avenue known as “Millionaire’s Row.”<\/p>\n
Duncan had just finished the General Grant National Memorial \u2014 a mausoleum for the 17th president and Civil War hero, overlooking the Hudson River \u2014 when he went to work for Asiel in 1897.<\/p>\n
Entering Duncan’s design tour-de-force, guests can cross a 46-foot, marble-tiled gallery to an oval-shaped dining room, or climb a sweeping, curved staircase to the parlor level.<\/p>\n
The dining room was the first stop for a pair of burglars in a 1906 break-in.<\/p>\n
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This view of the House of Cassini’s dining room shows its stunning mirrors and the toll time has taken on the carved wood paneling.<\/p>\n
Evan Joseph <\/p>\n
The dining room, enclosed by pocket doors, mirrors, and fading, carved wood paneling, played a role in a 1906 break-in that left Asiel bloodied and bereft of his silverware.<\/p>\n
The pre-dawn, gunpoint robbery was front-page news. “Elias Asiel Pounded Insensible with Brass Knuckles in Bedroom,” blared a headline in the evening edition of the Sun.<\/p>\n
According to accounts in four city newspapers, the two robbers broke into the basement service door with a saw and a diamond glass-cutting blade.<\/p>\n
Awakened upstairs in bed, Asiel was no easy mark.<\/p>\n
He got in a good punch or two before being beaten with brass knuckles and bound at the wrists and ankles “with stout pieces of cord.”<\/p>\n
He also refused to give up the combination to his safe, which contained “a fortune in gems” \u2014 heirloom jewelry he would bequeath to his daughter, asleep one floor up.<\/p>\n
Struggling free in his bedroom, Asiel cut short the robbery.<\/p>\n
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The sitting room adjoining the mansion’s master bedroom.<\/p>\n
Evan Joseph for Sotheby’s International Realty <\/p>\n
“Would one of you please wipe the blood out of my eyes?” the trussed broker asked as the pair ransacked his bedroom.<\/p>\n
The younger burglar paused to wet a cloth in the adjoining bathroom and gently wiped Asiel’s eyes, an act of kindness that later swayed a judge to impose a mere five-year sentence.<\/p>\n
The robbers pocketed Asiel’s $250 gold watch, 12 of his pearl-and-sapphire scarf pins, and $90 in cash. They then headed back downstairs to the dining room, where they’d left Asiel’s silver in a pile to grab on the way out.<\/p>\n
The two managed to pack up just three dozen forks and four dozen spoons when they were interrupted. Wriggling free of his ties, Asiel pulled a bedside bell cord to wake the seven sleeping servants, and was shouting for help out the window.<\/p>\n
The thieves fled into nearby Central Park, leaving most of the silver on the sideboard. They were caught and convicted some two years later.<\/p>\n
On the second floor \u2014 a library and drawing room.<\/p>\n
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The Cassini mansion’s library overlooks 63rd Street.<\/p>\n
Evan Joseph for Sotheby’s International Realty <\/p>\n
The mansion’s two most exquisite spaces \u2014 a wood-clad library and a bright drawing room \u2014 are at either end of the mansion’s second level, the “parlor floor,” where the ceilings are 17 feet high.<\/p>\n
The wood and marble-clad library faces the front of the building, its two tall arching windows overlooking leafy East 63rd Street.<\/p>\n
The library’s ceiling is the nesting site of four pairs of winged and clever cherubs.<\/p>\n
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The library’s ceilings are populated by watchful owls and pairs of cherubs gazing upon Latin-inscribed scrolls, the room’s only reading material.<\/p>\n
Evan Joseph\/Sotheby’s International Realty <\/p>\n
Photos of the library show no bookshelves. But there is reading material, if you’re a cherub.<\/p>\n
Pairs of the erudite tykes roost in each corner of the elaborately coffered ceiling, holding scrolls enscribed in Latin.<\/p>\n
“Malo Esse Quam Videri,” reads one, paraphrasing Cicero \u2014 “I would rather be than seem.”<\/p>\n
The drawing room is a bright sanctuary.<\/p>\n
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The House of Cassini’s drawing room looks like a wedding cake, frosted with garlands and roses.<\/p>\n
Evan Joseph for Sotheby’s International Realty <\/p>\n
The second-floor drawing room is a bright sanctuary where sunlight from the terrace floods inside through two French doors and alights mirror to mirror.<\/p>\n
The room resembles an intricate wedding cake, frosted with garlands of roses.<\/p>\n
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Garlands of plasterwork roses ring the second floor’s sunny drawing room.<\/p>\n
Evan Joseph for Sotheby’s International Realty <\/p>\n
A profusion of plasterwork decorates the ceiling and walls, ringing the space in garlands of budding and full-flower blooms.<\/p>\n
The effect is like standing inside a wedding cake, under a rose bower, and enclosed by a house of mirrors all at once.<\/p>\n
“Elegance upon elegance upon elegance,” Louise Beit, the mansion’s previous broker, enthused of the drawing room, in a YouTube tour of the home last year.<\/p>\n
A spacious gallery connects the library and drawing room, and features a balcony for “string quartets” to perform.<\/p>\n
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The Cassini mansion’s second-floor gallery connects the library and the drawing room.<\/p>\n
Evan Joseph for Sotheby’s International Realty <\/p>\n
A spacious gallery connects the second floor’s library and drawing room.<\/p>\n
“Standing here in the gallery, you can feel how they love lavish entertaining in the Gilded Age,” said Beit, of Sotheby’s International Realty.<\/p>\n
“You can greet your guests at the top of the steps with a string quartet entertaining you from the balcony.”<\/p>\n
Asiel died in his bedroom in 1920, at age 69.<\/p>\n
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Another view of the Cassini mansion library shows light from East 63rd Street streaming in through a pair of tall, arched windows.<\/p>\n
Evan Joseph for Sotheby’s International Realty <\/p>\n
Asiel and his two children \u2014 his daughter would marry a Bloomingdale \u2014 enjoyed the mansion through the nineteen-teens.<\/p>\n
In 1920, a year after his retirement, the broker died at home at age 69, missing the stock market crash by nine years.<\/p>\n
The robbery was his most lasting claim to fame. His obituary in The New York Times noted that he “gained high praise from the police for his coolness and bravery in a single-handed battle with two burglars.”<\/p>\n
In the ’60s and ’70s, the home was divided into seven rent-stabilized apartments.<\/p>\n
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The sweeping staircase of the House of Cassini spirals up toward its added sixth floor and skylight.<\/p>\n
Evan Joseph <\/p>\n
City records show that in the ’60s and ’70s, the home was owned by a California development company and had been divided into seven rent-stabilized apartments.<\/p>\n
In 1984, it was purchased by Nestor and Marianne Cassini, the designer’s secret wife.<\/p>\n
The sisters spent the next 30 years taking out mortgages, renovating, evicting the old tenants, and running the designer’s businesses \u2014 Oleg Cassini, Inc. and Cassini Parfums, Ltd., both in receivership since 2015.<\/p>\n
The winning, anonymous bidder pledged $34.5 million, and may need to spend many millions more to renovate.<\/p>\n
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The mystery buyer’s architect estimates that renovating the home will cost $25 million and take three to four years.<\/p>\n
Evan Joseph <\/p>\n
The next owner \u2014 named only as “15 East 63rd Street, LLC” in court papers \u2014 is now poised to inherit an architectural gem, rich in history and potential.<\/p>\n
“It appears that it has been a significant number of years since the townhouse was last comprehensively renovated,” Brown Harris Stevens broker Sami Hassoumi said in a court document on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The mystery buyer’s architect estimates that fully renovating the home will cost $25 million and take three to four years, Hassoumi said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"2026-02-25T10:55:01.228Z Share Copy link Email Facebook WhatsApp X LinkedIn Bluesky Threads lighning bolt icon An icon in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":144674,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[75,84,83,9,24,63],"class_list":{"0":"post-144673","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manhattan","8":"tag-manhattan","9":"tag-manhattan-headlines","10":"tag-manhattan-news","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-nyc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}