![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/532120e51afa8c79c2d15668a45facfc7c-4-East-80th-Street-exterior.rvertical.w600.jpg\")
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\n The Gothic exterior, as shown in listing photos, bears a resemblance to the Woolworth Tower downtown, also designed by a Cass Gilbert and built at the same time.
\n Photo: Modlin Group\n <\/p>\n
It took 14.5 years and a price cut of some 50 percent from its original $90 million ask<\/a>, but the Woolworth mansion at 4 East 80th Street has finally found a buyer. As The Real Deal reported<\/a>, the Gothic-style mansion is now in contract after being relisted last year for just under $50 million. The house, which is situated in the middle of a row of three townhouses that five-and-dime king Frank Winfield Woolworth built for his daughters, is\u00a0the grandest of the three, and the one most like Woolworth\u2019s own Upper East Side mansion, since demolished to make way for 990 Fifth Avenue, a Rosario Candela\u2013designed apartment building.<\/p>\n Certainly the asking price, but also the design of the mansion may have had something to do with its long-delayed sale. \u201cThe pool of buyers for this type of very specific architecture is super, super limited,\u201d said a broker. The seven-story, nearly 20,000-square-foot house, whose dark limestone fa\u00e7ade the New York Times once described as looking \u201ca bit like an expertly dripped sand castle,\u201d is almost dauntingly opulent. There\u2019s a dining room that seats 50, 14-foot ceilings on the parlor level, a wood-paneled library that runs the width of the house, three kitchens, massive stone fireplaces, and a baronial staircase dotted with busts. It\u2019s like living in an English manor but a quarter block from Fifth Avenue.<\/p>\n \n The wood-paneled library is one of the opulent, turn-of-the-century spaces in the mansion. Though lovely, the spaces are not modern. While it may not be to everyone\u2019s taste, the house\u2019s history as part of a family compound is highly unusual in Manhattan, as Christopher Gray noted<\/a> in a 2009 Times column. (Of the handful of collections that were built, for the Phelps, Dodge, and Brokaw families, for example, only a few remain). It bears a resemblance to the Woolworth building in Tribeca \u2014 hardly a coincidence as both the skyscraper and the three sisters\u2019 houses were designed by Cass Gilbert, and built at the same time as the Woolworth building. No. 4 was built for daughter Helena McCann, while the more austere marble houses on either side belonged to her sisters, Edna Hutton and Jesse Donahue. But Donahue\u2019s house, No. 6, is considered by many to be the most attractive, leading to a rumor that she was the favorite daughter, although it was clearly McCann who shared her father\u2019s taste in architecture.<\/p>\n Most recently, the house belonged to Lucille Roberts, founder of the women\u2019s-only sports clubs, who bought it from the Young Men\u2019s Philanthropic League<\/a> for $6 million in 1995. (It was, apparently, being used as a men\u2019s gym at the time.) During her renovation, Roberts put a gym and sauna on the sixth floor (getting up there must have been a workout in itself, though there is an elevator), and lived there until her death in 2003. Her family has been trying to sell it since 2011, periodically dropping the price, renting it out, and relisting it. Even the rental price dropped, from $210,000 in March 2011, when it first listed, to $80,000 in 2021.<\/p>\n \n The home, which is filled with period furniture, as shown in this listing photo of an entertaining room and the grand staircase, has been rented on and off for the last 14 years. While the house was listed with Adam Modlin, of the Modlin Group, for $49.95 million<\/a>,\u00a0according to a broker with knowledge of the listing,\u00a0it likely sold for about $10 million less than that, as the sellers were considering an offer in the high $30 million range over the summer. (That deal fell through, I was told, but it\u2019s unlikely to have fetched more than $40 million.) Modlin himself did not respond to a request for comment. Brown Harris Stevens broker Paula del Nunzio, who had the listing when it first came on the market in 2011 for $90 million, defended its unheard-of price at the time, noting that it was both massive and renovated\u00a0\u2014 an unusual combination, but this broker said that not all of it was move-in ready; Roberts also used part of the house for offices and\u00a0there are still a number of small maids rooms upstairs. Now it\u2019s been 30 years since Roberts bought the place and renters have been in and out of for more than a decade. \u201cIt needs a complete overhaul. Frankly it\u2019s super dated, very dark, very old,\u201d the broker said.<\/p>\n \n The mansion, at 4 E. 80th Street, is in the middle of a row of three built for Frank Woolworth\u2019s daughters. The high initial price also likely dissuaded buyers at first. To this day, no townhouse has cracked $90 million \u2014 hedge-funder Philip Falcone\u2019s doublewide townhouse on East 65th Street, set the townhouse record<\/a> in 2019 at nearly $80 million, which has yet to be surpassed. More recently, Eliot Spitzer\u2019s plans to put up a new Fifth Avenue tower<\/a> basically right next door at 985 Fifth probably drove away some others. Although living with the hassle of high-rise construction nearby is more palatable at the lower price point.<\/p>\n Over the years, No. 2 became a co-op with a weathered exterior and No. 6\u2019s marble remained pristine under the ownership of philanthropist Fred Koch. The McCann family held onto their house the longest, but it seemed to lend itself more to institutional than domestic use, and McCann\u2019s heirs sold off No.4 to the Holy Cross Fathers in 1943 (it was used for Catholic novitiates), who sold it to the Philanthropic League about a decade later, who owned it from the 1950s until 1995, when it went to Roberts. It\u2019s unclear who the new owner is \u2014 the sale has yet to hit city records \u2014 but it seems that the mansion\u2019s time as the fanciest rental in New York is over.<\/p>\n Sign Up for the Curbed Newsletter<\/p>\n A daily mix of stories about cities, city life, and our always evolving neighborhoods and skylines.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/d018de442080a9b70c6c1c8abc1ecf9c17-4-East-80th-Street-4.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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\n Photo: Modlin Group\n <\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/435496583ac1ed0c01ee19f420aa592ea9-4-East-80th-Street-2.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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\n Photo: Modlin Group\n <\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/9122fa385ef3663dfc394be7521f4dfda9-woolworth.rvertical.w570.jpg\")
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\n Photo: Courtesy NYPL\n <\/p>\n