| Konsulat Generalny Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej w Nowym Jorku
Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in New York |
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| Location | Madison Avenue, New York City, United States |
| Address | 233 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 |
| Ambassador | Ewa Junczyk-Ziomecka
(Consul General) |
The Consulate General of Poland in New York is a consular mission of the Republic of Poland in the United States of America. It is a regional office of the Polish Embassy in Washington. The consulate is located at 233 Madison Avenue, New York City, NY.
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Designed in 1905 by C. P. H. Gilbert, the Mansion which now stands proudly on the corner of 37th Street and Madison Avenue was originally built for mining millionaire Joseph Raphael De Lamar. Born in Holland in 1843, De Lamar had left home in 1860 and earned his passage to America by working on a steampship for the duration of his voyage. Upon arriving her first went to Maine and set up a salvage business; he did not make a success of this and soon headed west where he quickly amassed a great fortune, having become a small stakeholder in a mining venture.
In the early 1890s De Lamar moved to New York City and first lived in a modest apartment building at 217 West 115th Street. He met and married Nellie Sands there in 1893 and their only child, Alice, was born in 1895, however, having made no social progress since his arrival in the city, the couple mutually divorced soon after.
In 1902, Mr. De Lamar employed Mr. Gilbert, the renowned mansion specialist, to build him a house in the heart of Murray Hill. This area had really seen its heyday in the 1860s and was by now in a rather steap decline. However, it was still considered a wealthy area and De Lamar considered it just right for his future residence.
The De Lamar Mansion marked a stark departure from Gilbert's traditional style of lazy French Gothic architecture and was instead robustly Beaux-Arts, heavy with rusticated stonework, balconies and a colossal mansard roof.
The 1910 census taker found Mr. De Lamar in residence with his daughter Alice, by then 15, and nine servants, a typical ratio. De Lamar died just eight years later in 1918, his obituary in The Boston Daily Globe described him as a “man of mystery” and an accomplished organist. He left an estate worth $29 million to his daughter, who continued living in the house for a short time before moving to a Park Avenue Apartment. In the 1920s she sold the house to the American National Democratic Club and thus it was in the De Lamar house that Roosevelt's son famously reported that the controversy over his father's third term was a 'dead issue'.
Since the National Democratic Club's move to new Park Avenue premises in the late 1970s, the building has been the Consulate General of the Polish Republic who in 1973 bought the property for $900,000. Nowadays it has been thoroughly cleaned and renovated inside and retains all of its many period features. Since 2008 the consulate has also been regularly illuminated at night and has become a true Madison Avenue landmark.
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