The Valmont Mansion from “Cruel Intentions”

I have never been a fan of the movie Cruel Intentions (though the 1999 drama does feature one of my favorite onscreen moments).  But during my April 2016 trip to the Big Apple, my good friend/fellow stalker Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, took me to stalk the Upper East Side estate that portrayed the Valmont Mansion – where step-siblings Kathryn Merteuil (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Sebastian Valmont (Ryan Phillippe) lived and wreaked havoc on their friends and enemies – in the flick, and I pretty much fell in love with the place on sight.  Known as the Harry F. Sinclair House as well as the Fletcher-Sinclair Mansion in real life, the massive French Gothic-style pad is nothing short of stunning.  So, in spite of my disdain for Cruel Intentions, I figured the residence was most-definitely blog-worthy.

Commissioned by railroad tycoon Isaac Fletcher in 1897, the Harry F. Sinclair House took two years to complete.  The impressive C.P.H. Gilbert-designed dwelling was modeled after William K. Vanderbilt’s Petit Chateau, formerly located about 30 blocks south at 660 Fifth Avenue.  The limestone masterpiece was furnished with an extensively carved façade, a mansard roof, an ornate wooden staircase, a library, a parlor, a ballroom, and an elevator.  When Fletcher passed away in 1917, he left the estate, as well as his extensive art collection, to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which immediately turned around and sold the place to industrialist Harry Ford Sinclair.

Shortly after serving 6.5 months in jail for his part in the infamous Teapot Dome Scandal, Sinclair departed the UES manse, selling it to longtime bachelor Augustus Van Horne Stuyvesant Jr., who lived out the remainder of his days there as a virtual recluse.  Upon Stuyvesant’s passing in 1953, his furnishings and décor were sold off and the residence was left vacant.

Around that time, the Ukrainian Institute of America, a foundation established to promote Ukrainian art, culture, music, and literature, was looking to expand into a new, larger headquarters.  The group quickly honed in on the Fletcher-Sinclair Mansion, snatching it up for $225,000 in 1955.  Today, the site, which has been painstakingly restored and preserved, plays host to special events, art exhibitions, auctions, performances, concerts, lectures, and, of course, filming.  Best of all – it is open to the public!  Sadly, neither Owen nor I realized that when we stalked it, otherwise we most certainly would have ventured inside to see the stunning interior, which you can check out some photographs of here, here, and here.

The Fletcher-Sinclair Mansion popped up numerous times throughout Cruel Intentions.

Only the exterior of the estate was featured in the flick, though.

The lavish interior of Sebastian and Kathryn’s home was just a set built inside of a soundstage in Los Angeles.  Production designer Jon Gary Steele had this to say of his concept of the Valmont Mansion,  “Most of the story takes place in modern-day New York, but when you walked into the Valmont townhouse, I wanted you to feel like you were walking into a Parisian ballroom.  The furniture in the living room was very Louis XIV.  We stripped the wood and reupholstered it in a much more modern fabric so the room didn’t feel totally period.  Then we added bronze chairs and a bronze table.  I didn’t want it to feel like only one piece of the film was period and everything else was modern-contemporary.  I wanted the audience to feel like it was a period piece, but once they examined the room and noticed the detail, they would realize the contemporary additions.  Because these people have blue-blood money and are very much world travelers, I put in a little bit of everything.  There are a lot of French buildings in New York.  It’s not uncommon to find people like this now living in places like this.”  Interestingly, the set was constructed long before locations managers had secured an estate to serve as the exterior of the Valmont Mansion.  When the Harry F. Sinclair House was ultimately chosen, Steele was shocked to discover that the interior closely mirrored his design, “right down to the similar moldings and comparable room dimensions.”

Cruel Intentions is hardly the first production to feature the pad.

In the 1987 comedy Hello Again, the Fletcher-Sinclair Mansion portrays the home of Junior Lacey (Austin Pendleton), where Lucy Chadman (Shelley Long) and her sister, Zelda (Judith Ivey), go to ask for funding to start a day care center at the Knickerbocker Hospital.

The interior of the property appears in the movie, as well.

The manse pops up as the exterior of the Manhattan pied-à-terre of Estella (Gwyneth Paltrow) and Ms. Dinsmoor (Anne Bancroft) in 1998’s Great Expectations.  Interiors were shot elsewhere, though.

The Fletcher-Sinclair Mansion appears numerous times as the both the 1876 and present-day interior of “Albany House,” the home of Leopold (Hugh Jackman), in the 2001 romance Kate & Leopold.

Only the inside of the pad is featured in the flick.  The exterior of Leopold’s mansion can be found at 1 Hanover Square in New York’s Financial District.

The property also portrays the alternate-reality home of the Suarez family in the Season 4 episode of Ugly Betty titled “Million Dollar Smile,” which aired in 2010.

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Big THANK YOU to my friend/fellow stalker Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, for taking me to this location. 

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Harry F. Sinclair House, aka the Fletcher-Sinclair Mansion, aka the Valmont Mansion from Cruel Intentions, is located at 2 East 79th Street on New York’s Upper East Side.

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