Rhinelander Mansion

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The third, fourth and fifth floors of the Rhinelander Mansion from Madison Avenue

The Rhinelander Mansion, or more accurately The Gertrude Rhinelander Waldo Mansion is a massive French Renaissance Revival mansion. It was originally designed in the 1890s by Kimball & Thompson and built in 1898. It is located at 867 Madison Avenue on the south east corner of 72nd Street, Manhattan.

Gertrude Rhinelander Waldo, the New York heiress who commissioned the mansion, never actually moved in.

Henry Hope Reed has this to say in "Beaux-Arts Architecture in New York" (Dover Publications Inc., 1988) "The fortress heritage of the rural, royal residences of the Loire was not lost in the transfer to New York. The roofline is very fine....The Gothic is found in the high-pitched roof of slate, the high, ornate dormers and the tall chimneys. The enrichment is early Renaissance, especially at the center dormers on both facades of the building, which boast colonnettes, broken entablatures, finials on high bases, finials in relief and volutes. In fact, although the dormers are ebullient, ornamentation is everywhere, even in the diamond-shaped pattern in relief on the chimneys (traceable to Chambord)."^[1]

The building remained vacant until 1921 at which time the first floor was converted into stores and two apartments were carved out of the upper four floors. At one time the Italian company of Olivetti Brothers occupied the building and had their name on the north side of the building facing 72nd Street ^{[citation needed]}.

Dining room in the de Evia home in the Rhinelander Masion in the 1950s

In the 1950s, the entire mansion was leased as the home and studio of the photographer Edgar de Evia, who rented offices in the building to the interior decorators Tate and Hall, among others.

Lisa Fonssagrives in a photograph taken by Edgar de Evia in the Rhinelander Mansion.

The building remained in the possession of de Evia and his companion and business partner, Robert Denning, until it was purchased by a nearby church in the late 1960s. Ralph Lauren obtained the net lease in 1983 and started a massive overhaul of the building to create his Polo Ralph Lauren flagship store. Ownership of the building has changed several times during his lease, from US$ 6.4 million in 1984, five years later in 1989 it sold for US$ 43 million^[2] and the most recent sale in 2005 being reported at a record US$80 million.^[3][4]

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