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They say revenge is a dish best served cold. Well, I think revenge movies are a dish best served with a side of comedy. The Other Woman? 9 to 5? The Sting? The First Wives Club? All perfection! The latter is one of my ultimate favorites, so when I saw the address of the spectacular Upper East Side townhouse where wealthy socialite Gunilla Garson Goldberg (Maggie Smith) lived in the 1996 flick listed in the book Manhattan on Film, I promptly added it to my To-Stalk List for my April 2016 trip to the Big Apple. The Beaux Arts-style structure, known as the Benjamin N. Duke House in real life, turned out to be even more stunning in person than it appeared onscreen. It is easily one of the prettiest pads I have ever laid eyes upon!
The Benjamin N. Duke House, also known as the Duke Semans Mansion, was originally constructed as part of a spec development of four adjacent Fifth Avenue estates. Brothers William W. and Thomas M. Hall commissioned the Welch, Smith & Provot architecture firm to design the elaborate dwellings. Sadly, the Duke house is the only one that remains standing today.
Completed in 1901, the 8-story property boasts a stately limestone and brick edifice, a French Renaissance interior, hand-carved wood paneling, trompe l’oeil accents, plaster friezes, a 5-story staircase, hardwood flooring, 12 bedrooms, 14 bathrooms, 2 rooftop patios, 11 wood-burning fireplaces, 3 elevators, a whopping 20,000 square feet of living space, and views of Central Park and The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The pad even has a separate penthouse level complete with a private entrance and staircase.
Though the townhouse fronts Fifth Avenue . . .
. . . it is its 82nd Street side that is most impressive. The building reminds me quite a bit of the Cravens Estate in Pasadena, but on a much grander scale.
Shortly after its completion, the 100×27-foot property was purchased by American Tobacco Company founder Benjamin N. Duke.
The manse continued to be owned by members of the Duke family for more than one hundred years. It was not until 2006 that Benjamin’s granddaughter Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans (hence the name Duke Semans Mansion) sold the townhouse to real estate mogul Tamir Sapir. The purchase price? A cool $40 million!
Sapir subsequently sold the pad in 2010 to the richest man in the world at the time, Mexican business tycoon Carlos Slim, for $44 million. Five years later, Slim put the residence on the market with an asking price of $80 million (!!!), but it does not appear that there were any takers.
The Benjamin N. Duke House is not only listed on the National Register of Historic Places, but is also a New York City Landmark.
Sadly, there are not many photographs of the mansion’s interior floating around online, but you can catch a glimpse of a few here, as well as watch some videos that show portions of the inside of the structure here and here.
In The First Wives Club, Shelly Stewart (Sarah Jessica Parker) heads to the Benjamin N. Duke House for a “super social luncheon” with Gunilla.
I am unsure if the actual interior of the mansion was utilized in the scene, but I do not believe so. None of the photographs of the inside of the townhouse that I have come across match what was shown onscreen, so I am guessing that interiors were filmed at another Manhattan estate or on a studio-built set.
The First Wives Club is not the only production to feature the Benjamin N. Duke House.
In The French Connection, the property portrays an apartment building where actor Dom Ameche and a criminal named Weinstock (Harold Gray) are both said to reside.
The mansion looked quite a bit different when the Best Picture-winning thriller was shot in 1971 than it does today, as you can see below.
The townhouse also portrayed the home of Henry Turner (Harrison Ford) and his family in the 1991 drama Regarding Henry.
Scenes taking place inside the Turner residence were shot elsewhere, though, on what I believe was a studio-built set.
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Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: The Benjamin N. Duke House, aka Gunilla’s mansion from The First Wives Club, is located at 1009 Fifth Avenue on New York’s Upper East Side.
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