Schinasi House

The Schinasi House at the corner of Riverside Drive and 107th Street stands as the last remaining detached, single-family mansion in Manhattan. Built in 1909 for Morris Schinasi, a wealthy immigrant who made his fortune in the cigarette industry, the white marble structure was designed to resemble a French Renaissance chateau. At the time of its construction, developers predicted that the city's wealthiest families would abandon the Upper East Side for the quieter, scenic views of the Hudson River. This migration never occurred, leaving the mansion as a singular, isolated monument to a vision of the Upper West Side that never came to be.