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The Schinasi House is a 12,000 square foot, 35 room marble mansion on Riverside Dr. in New York City. It was built in 1907 for Turkish tobacco barron Morris Schinasi. The mansion was designed by Carnegie Hall architect William Tuthill and reportedly retains almost all of its historic detail, including a Prohibition-era trap door that once extended all the way to the river.〔http://realestate.yahoo.com/promo/5-old-world-style-american-palaces.html〕 The structure was added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 23, 1980 and designated a New York City Landmark on March 19, 1974. It has been cited as being the last remaining detached single-family house in Manhattan.〔http://curbed.com/archives/2012/04/11/five-american-palaces-in-the-grand-european-tradition.php〕〔LX TV: Open House, Square Footage. Perf. Felise Grose, Broker. Default Viral Title Player. Brown Harris Steven. Web. 15 Feb. 2012. Completed in 1909 at the northeast corner of West 107th Street and Riverside Drive, the three-story, 12,000 square foot mansion was designed in neo-French-Renaissance style by William Tuthill.,〔"Schinasi Residence." Landmarks Preservation Commission 19 (1974). Print.〕 the same architect who designed Carnegie Hall. Morris Schinasi, a Turkish immigrant who made his millions on cigarettes, commissioned the design and owned the thirty-five-room mansion until his death in 1928. After that the mansion changed hands several times until 1979 when Hans Smit, a Columbia University Law Professor, bought it and commissioned an extensive interior restoration.〔Gray, Christopher. "Schinasi: A Manor from Turkish Tobacco." New York Times 4 May 1997. Print.〕 It was designated a New York City landmark on March 19, 1974.〔 The mansion is one of a kind, with rich details in every niche of the building. Pineapple motifs, seen as a symbol of hospitality, are repeated throughout the ornamentation and there was originally a tunnel, now closed up, that led under ground to the Hudson River.〔 Until 2013 it was inhabited by Hans Smit's son, Robert Smit, his two daughters, Jessie and Marley, and his son, Lennon. On March 19, 1974 the Schinasi mansion was designated a New York City landmark. The Landmarks Preservation Commission found that this residence had “special character, special historical and aesthetic interest, and value as part of the development, heritage, and cultural characteristics of New York City.”〔 ==History== Morris Schinasi who commissioned this mansion in 1909 was a Turkish immigrant who came to the United States in 1882. He came from a family with little money and borrowed $25,000 (in US) from a friend to get to the United States. With him he brought a machine that would change his fortune – a cigarette-rolling machine he designed and presented at the Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893. Until this point, every single cigarette had been hand rolled and therefore this novel device created a lot of interest. Soon after, his brother joined him in New York City and they established the Schinasi Brothers Company, which featured their brand “Egyptian Prettiest” cigarettes rolled with Turkish tobacco. The product became very popular and the brothers built their commercial empire from the ground up.〔Guleyuz, Niam. "Morris Schinasi and the Mansia Children's Hospital." Turk of America. 13 July 2008. Web. 13 Feb. 2012. After Schinasi had made his fortune, and met his wife in 1903, he decided to build the mansion on Riverside Drive. At the time most mansions were being built along Park Avenue and Fifth Avenue, but it was predicted that patrons commissioning mansions would get tired of the hustle and bustle of the busy East Side and retreat to building their extravagant homes along the quieter Riverside Drive. As this prediction never came to fruition, the Schinasi mansion remains the largest single-family residence along Riverside Drive.〔 Schinasi selected William Tuthill as the architect for the mansion, but the relationship was not a pleasant one. Rumor has it that Schinasi was not completely satisfied with the work and thus never paid Tuthill, who later sued Schinasi for a sum of $5655.65.〔 Schinasi lived at the mansion with his wife, Laurette, and three daughters, Victoria, Juliette, and Altina for almost twenty years. In 1928 Schinasi died at the age of seventy-one, and two years later his heirs sold the house to Semple Realty Corporation for $200,000. Since 1930 the mansion has seen many different visitors and uses, beginning as a Semple School for Girls that served as a finishing school for well to-do young ladies. It is said that in 1956 Mrs. Semple herself actually died in one of the mansion's thirty-five rooms. Columbia University was the next to purchase the building in 1960 and turned it into a daycare center known as “The Children’s Mansion”. Columbia sold the mansion in 1979 to Columbia law professor Hans Smit and his wife for $325,000. At this time he initiated an interior restoration that took twenty years to complete.〔 During Smit’s ownership, he never actually lived in the building, yet his brother’s family did for several years during this time period. Smit also used the mansion for Columbia Law School gatherings and small parties. After Smit completed the restoration in 2006 he attempted to sell with an initial asking price of $31 million. Since then the mansion has made a handful of appearances on the real estate market. It was listed at $15 million in the fall of 2011.〔"Townhouse: Morris and Laurette Schinasi House at 351 Riverside Drive in Upper West Side." StreetEasy: MORRIS AND LAURETTE SCHINASI HOUSE at 351 Riverside Drive in Upper West Side. Web. 13 Feb. 2012. Mark Schwartz, a vice chairman at the investment bank Goldman Sachs, bought the Schinasi House at 351 Riverside Drive in 2013. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Schinasi Mansion」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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