Samuel J. Tilden House

The Samuel J. Tilden House at fifteen Gramercy Park South stands as a rare survivor of Victorian Gothic residential design in New York City. The building was originally two separate townhouses that the influential bachelor politician Samuel J. Tilden had combined into a single, grand mansion during the eighteen eighties. He hired the renowned architect Calvert Vaux to redesign the facade, resulting in the distinctive pink sandstone exterior you see today. Vaux decorated the house with intricate carvings of literary figures like Dante and Shakespeare, embedding them directly into the stone walls to reflect Tilden's scholarly interests.