Sherry Bronfman’s 35-foot-wide Beaux-Arts residence on the Upper West Side is about to hit the market for $24 million, Gimme Shelter has learned.
The red brick and limestone residence at 337 Riverside Drive, on the corner of West 106th Street, is also the site of this year’s Kips Bay Decorator Show House New York. The design event, now in its 48th year — and the first in New York since 2019 — raises money for the Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club. It opens to the public for a month beginning on May 11.
The home will showcase 22 top designers and architects including Penny Drue Baird, Dessins LLC and Sasha Bikoff Interior Design during the event.
Bronfman, the ex-wife of Seagram billionaire heir Edgar Bronfman Jr., raised three children here: Vanessa; Benjamin, a musician/entrepreneur who shares a child with rapper M.I.A.; and Hannah, a DJ, entrepreneur, social media influencer and mom married to Brendan Fallis.
Bronfman, a philanthropist and actor who co-starred in the 1971 film “Shaft” as Marcy, has said that bringing the Kips Bay Decorator Show House to her home “is both exciting and in sync with our personal values of giving back.”
Known as River Mansion — the name is ornately displayed above the front door — the grand corner home beside Riverside Park was built in 1902. It is one of seven Beaux-Arts mansions, from 330 to 337 Riverside Drive, known as the Seven Beauties, and it was the subject of a book,“The Man With the Sawed-Off Leg and Other Tales of a New York City Block, by Daniel J. Wakin.
The showcase itself will have plenty of space to work with. The 10,000-square-foot, five-story, five-bedroom property features a grand foyer, a parlor, a library, a wine room and cellar, a media room, multiple kitchens, a dining room, a roof deck and an elevator. The main entrance is flanked by columns inspired by late 16th-century French architecture. An original iron fence surrounds the property.
It also comes with quite a history. Former owners include Shakespearean actress Julia Marlowe who paid $68,000 it for in 1903. Three years later, she sold it to the wife of businessman Lothar Faber. By the time of the Great Depression, the home had been carved up and filled with tragic stories. By 1935, a doctor on the fourth floor jumped out a window and died. The following year, painter Michael De Santis died from a brain tumor six months after moving there.
By 1978, Edgar Bronfman Jr. bought the River Mansion for $5.6 million and it became the family residence. “It’s finally time to start a new chapter,” a friend said.
The listing broker is Jonathan Stein of Douglas Elliman.
