Gertrude Rhinelander Waldo House

The Gertrude Rhinelander Waldo House stands on the corner of Madison Avenue and Seventy-Second Street as a stone relic of the Gilded Age. Built between eighteen ninety-four and eighteen ninety-eight, this mansion was designed by the firm Kimball and Thompson to mimic the elegant chateaus of the Loire Valley in France. Its owner, the wealthy heiress Gertrude Rhinelander Waldo, spent years traveling through Europe to collect fine art, tapestries, and statuary for her future home. These treasures were shipped back to New York and left sitting in crates within the mansion's rooms, waiting to be unpacked. Despite this immense preparation, Gertrude never moved into the house, choosing instead to live in a row house across the street where she could watch the building from her window.