A stunning Victorian-era mansion in New York City, which saw a notable murder-suicide in 1902, has been put on the market for an astounding $29.5 million.
The luxurious Upper East Side of Manhattan’s Upper East Side is home to the six-story house, which is conveniently located only five minutes’ walk from President John F. Kennedy’s fabled Carlyle Hotel tryst location.
The renowned Mark Hotel is just around the corner in the other way, where Meghan Markle had her baby shower in a $75,000-per-night penthouse.
Cello, a high-end sound system provider that bought the building in 1997 for $5.5 million, moved in as its most recent occupant. A renowned antiques merchant is presently located on the ground level.
One of New York City’s most horrifying murders is hidden behind the odd Spanish mediaeval brick façade and fortress-like ironwork, which masks a dark and tortured past.
For 35-year-old Paul Leicester Ford, a distinguished professor from Brooklyn whose career bloomed into a best-selling author, the eight bedroom, five bathroom house was constructed in 1901.
WHO WAS PAUL FORD, THE AUTHOR WHOSE LIFE ENDED IN A NOVEL-WORTHY MURDER PLOT?
Famous author Paul Ford constructed the home in 1901 for his expanding family.
Grace Kidder, a wealthy Brooklyn lady, was his most recent wife. When the crime was committed, she was upstairs and eight months pregnant.
Ford was born with dwarfism due to a spinal injury. He came from a well-known academic family that had a Merriam-Webster dictionary inventor for a grandpa.
His brother Malcom, who was left out of the family will when he decided to pursue a career in athletics, and he had been at odds for 11 years before his murder.
The Georgian-style mansion, which sits on a 34-foot-wide lot, was created by architect Henry Rutgers Marshall. It was later modified in 1927 to include some of New York’s most distinctive interiors, which included priceless artwork, ancient sculpture, and a staircase valued at $400,000 in 1987 (roughly $1 million in today’s money).
The house, which stands on the intersection of Madison Avenue and East 77th Street, was built as the city’s wealthiest families—bankers, industrialists, and railroad tycoons—flocked uptown to the Fifth Avenue neighborhood’s Gold Coast, which borders Central Park.
As the grandson of Noah Webster, who published the first Merriam-Webster dictionary, and a writer whose mother was a close friend of Emily Dickinson throughout her life, Ford was born into a socially famous family in 1865.
Ford published his grandfather’s family history when he was only 11 years old, and in 1892 he produced a 10-volume collection of Thomas Jefferson’s works that is now hailed as a “monument of American historical research.”
The Honorable Peter Stirling (1898) and Janenice Meredith (1899), two historical fiction novels that Ford published in the early 1890s, were big sellers.
Ford had married wealthy socialite Grace Kidder in 1900 despite being born with a spinal condition that left him with a bent back and dwarfism. He was also enjoying a professional upswing that allowed him to build the opulent house he had imagined as a home for his expanding family.
Worthington Ford, one of his brothers, acted as the best man, although Malcolm was not there.
After the home was finished, Ford put his father’s enormous library, which included more than 100,000 volumes and 60,000 manuscripts, in a 30-square-foot office at the back of the second floor. Ford would rarely get to appreciate it, though, since he would pass only a year later.
Around 11 a.m. on May 8, 1902, after a brief, quiet disagreement, Paul’s rebellious brother Malcom shot and killed him before turning the pistol on himself.
Spendthrift Malcom Ford, who chose to pursue a career as an amateur athlete over meeting academic expectations, was disowned by his father.
Malcom pursued his passion for athletics to national success in track and field and other activities, despite loud objections from his family.
He won the American National Championship in the event that is equal to today’s decathlon three times, and he also won the National Championships in the long jump, 100-yard sprint, and 200-yard dash twice. It took Carl Lewis until 1983 to complete “The Triple,” as it was known.
Malcom’s father’s death from illness and the fact that he was the only kid left out of his father’s $2 million wealth (approximately $65 million in today’s money) set off an 11-year family conflict that culminated in the murder-suicide.
In an unsuccessful effort to get a piece of the money, Malcom sued his six siblings in 1894, claiming they had vowed to secretly combine their funds for a seventh portion.
‘I do not understand why Malcom should inherit any of the estate, when my father had put down his life to rescue Malcom,’ Ford said to the court during the trial. He sacrificed a noble life to rescue an undeserving one.
Malcom reportedly had breakfast with his kid, who was seven years old, on the day of the murder before walking uptown to see his brother. Before eerily repeating these lines to a servant who answered the door at 53 East 77th Street, he is said to have informed the elevator operator that it was an especially fine morning and that “The better the day, the greater the deed.”
Malcom ran up the stairs to his brother’s office where he could see him working furiously on a fresh manuscript. Malcom shot his brother after an argument about money, then he shot himself.
When Ford started to stumble about the office, his stenographer, who was in the room, grabbed him and led him to a couch next to the desk to rest.
Paul’s last words, despite a doctor’s valiant efforts to save him, were “I must die like a courageous man.” Grace, his wife who is eight months pregnant, was upstairs the whole time.
A responding police officer described the act as a “mental aberration.” “I don’t suppose a guy without a criminal streak would shoot his brother unless he was briefly mad,” the author said.
The murder was top page news in the evening publications by early evening. Police had to push back a group of inquisitive spectators who had gathered on the street outside the house as word of the tragedy spread around New York City and they wanted to pay their respects to the adored author.
The New York Times said that “despite the police, the street was busy all through the evening and late into the night.”
The brothers were both laid to rest in the same plot at Sleepy Hallow Graveyard following a funeral the following day.
Lesta was the couple’s only child, born to Grace on June 3 after less than a month.
In 1908, she remarried and finally sold the home to Joseph Kerrigan, a banker and diplomat, and his wife Esther, a Slater Mill fortune heiress. (The Slater Mill is credited for establishing the US textile industry since it was the first American plant to successfully make yard using water-powered equipment.)
At that time, Esther was planning to build a home for her new family after divorcing her first husband Sumner Welles, who served as Secretary of State under Franklin D. Roosevelt.
When it came to upgrading the property, Esther spared no money, working with her cousin, the architect Paul Hunt (who was also the son of renowned Boston painter, William Morris Hunt).
She changed the townhouse’s front exterior to brick and added an overhanging roof to give it a Spanish-medieval feel.
The entrance door was replaced with a Gothic metal studded and wood egress from Europe, and the windows were embellished with “fortress-like” ironwork (which is still part of the home today).
The interior was a disorganised maze of spaces designed to display their priceless collection of artwork, which included works by John Singer Sargent, Gainsborough, Redon, and Daumier among other artists.
Antiques from the Renaissance, lavish tapestries, and stained-glass windows decorated the bedroom floors.
An 18th-century painted panel from Persia was used to adorn the pantry, and a room was created around a special collection of Aubrey Beardsley images.
A large stucco staircase had walls with ancient objects imbedded in them, including a Latin stone inscription, a replica of a Roman boat, and architectural models.
A second cousin of Esther Kerrigan who performed metalwork throughout the home, Hunt Diederich, created the “extraordinary and sensual line of curving wrought-iron herons” that made up the main staircase, according to the New York Times.
The staircase alone was worth $400,000 in 1987.
The Kerrigans transformed the notorious study where Paul Ford was killed into a music room with a hooded Venetian fireplace that was allegedly taken from the Ca d’Oro (also known as the golden palace), which looks out over the Grand Canal in Venice.
The house received appreciation for its “unique combination of global taste” and “scheme that is utterly distinctive without first looking other than natural” in the journal “International Studio.”
Just before she passed away in 1951, Esther divorced Joseph Kerrigan in 1947.
Her two elder children from her previous marriage to Sumner Welles had priority over her youngest son Hunt, who had suffered a catastrophic injury in Korea, in her will.
Hunt Kerrigan tried to sue his siblings for $8 million, but he was unsuccessful, just like Malcom before him.
The home underwent a number of transformations throughout the years, starting out as Funk & Wagnall’s publisher’s office. Later, Cello, a manufacturer of high-end equipment, used the building as its corporate headquarters and outfitted the ground floor with a recording studio and restaurant.
It is now used as an upmarket antique furniture dealership and is designated for commercial use.
The Persian-panelled pantry and several of the larger rooms have been lost to the passage of time, but other original components have survived.
According to the listing, “The structure has superb bones and proportions with windows on the north, south, and west.”