East 80th Street Houses

The East 80th Street Houses stand as a rare, unified row of four grand residences built between 1922 and 1930. These homes were designed in various Colonial Revival styles for some of the most affluent figures of the era, including Vincent Astor, Clarence Dillon, and George Whitney. The owners shared a specific motivation for constructing this particular row. The land on 80th Street sat at a higher elevation than the houses behind them on 79th Street, and the owners purchased the lots behind their own gardens specifically to ensure that no future tall apartment buildings would ever be constructed to block their sunlight. In 1967, these four houses became the first group of townhouses on the Upper East Side to be designated as official New York City landmarks.