In 1869, when Edith Wharton's aunt Mary Mason Jones (immortalized as Mrs. Manson Mingot in "The Age of Innocence') finished her French classical house at the corner of 57th Street and Fifth Avenue - in a block for which her father paid $1500 forty years earlier - she was considered an adventuress for building so far uptown. By 1882, just down the avenue at 52nd Street, William K. Vanderbilt finished his limestone mansion, ushering in the era of the lavish New York Great House, modeled after the London houses of English aristocrats and their Parisian counterparts."Great Houses of New York, 1880-1930"presents the stories of the most elegant houses built in New York. Michael Kathrens profiles New York houses known only for their magisterial presence on the city's most elegant boulevards, some of which still exist today, including the houses of Otto Kahn (Convent of the Sacred Heart), Andrew Carnegie (Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum), James B. Duke (NYU Institute of Fine Art), Morton F. Plant (Cartier), and William Starr Miller (Neue Gallery). "
