The 1025 Park Avenue House was constructed in 1911-12 for the well-known composer of light opera and popular music, Reginald DeKoven and his wife Anna. The house is a rare surviving mansion from the period when Park Avenue was being developed into a grand and exclusive boulevard bordered by private homes and elegant apartment houses. It was designed in an unusual urban adaptation of the Jacobean Revival style by John Russell Pope, one of America’s leading architects.
The dominating, symmetrically arranged bay windows and the solid brick facade with stone trim are reminiscent of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century manor houses of Britain from which this style is derived. This stately home with its vast halls and elegant spaces was the scene of numerous gatherings and concerts for the DeKovens and their friends from socially elite circles of New York.
