Description

THE LEHMAN ART HOUSE
ARCHITECTURE & HISTORY
Architect John H. Duncan built 7 West 54th Street for Philip Lehman in 1899-1900. Constructed in the French Beaux-Arts style, the house was built the same year that McKim, Mead, and White began construction on the Landmarked University Club located on the northwest corner of West 54th Street and Fifth Avenue. John Duncan was already well known as the designer of the General Grant National Memorial as well as the Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial Arch on Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn, both designated New York City Landmarks.

Among the fashionable, upper-class homes that were erected along the north side of West 54th Street was No. 7 in the popular Beaux Arts style, directly across the street from the substantial brownstone mansion of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. at No. 4. The handsome exterior of the Lehman residence is faced with rusticated limestone that provides a background for a profusion of luxuriant relief carving symmetrically massed and distinguished by an elaborately designed two-story mansard roof.

Philip Lehman (1861-1947), was the son of Emmanuel Lehman, a founder of Lehman Brothers, a firm created just after the Civil War. Philip Lehman became a partner in the firm in 1887. He served as first chairman of the board of directors from 1929 to 1941; Philip Lehman is perhaps best known, however, for his fabulous private art collection which his son Robert expanded over the years following his death.

The Lehman art collection numbered over 3,000 works and 7 West 54th Street became the family's private gallery. In 1962 the house was opened to the public for one week to view what The New York Times called one of the last great privately held art collections in the world. The $25 entrance fee was donated to the Institute of Fine Arts, a graduate school of New York University. When Robert Lehman died in 1969 his will bequeathed the artwork to the Metropolitan Museum with the caveat that it must always remain together and that the major rooms of the Lehman Art House be transferred intact and reassembled in the Lehman wing of the Metropolitan Museum of art where they can be seen today.

A 21st CENTURY HEADQUARTERS
Meticulously restored with the expertise and cooperation of the Metropolitan Museum of Art alongside a number of skilled artisans and designers, 7 West 54th Street has been transformed into a 21st Century headquarters ideal for use by a hedge fund, family offi