UES Home of Late Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau on Market for $3.2M
Edited by: TJVNews.com
Robert Morgenthau was the longest-serving district attorney in the history of the state of New York. He died in 2019, only days before his 100th birthday, but now his estate has listed his Manhattan home for $3.2 million, according to a report in the New York Post.
Morgenthau served in this role from 1975 until his retirement in 2009. The New York Post reported that on February 27, 2009, Morgenthau announced that he would not seek reelection in 2009. “I never expected to be here this long … [R]ecently, I figured that I’d served 25 years beyond the normal retirement age,” he said during his announcement.
“If you want people to have confidence in their government, you’ve got to show that people who have economic power or political power are not immune from prosecution,” he told Bloomberg News.
Born into wealth and privilege, Morgenthau was the son of Henry Morgenthau Jr., who served as the Secretary of the Treasury under Presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman from 1934 until 1945. Wikipedia reported that his maternal great-grandfather was Mayer Lehman, a co-founder of Lehman Brothers. His grandfather, Henry Morgenthau Sr., was United States Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Before going into diplomatic service, Henry Morgenthau Sr. had made a fortune in real estate, and became a strong financial backer of Democratic President Woodrow Wilson. Morgenthau’s paternal grandmother was born in Montgomery, Alabama.
Having bought the apartment at 64 East 86th Street with his wife in 1966, Morgenthau remained there until his death. His wife was Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Lucinda Franks. She passed away in May 2021. The building was constructed in 1917, according to the NY Post report.
The Post report also indicated that the Morgenthau home was two apartments that were combined into one on the 10th floor of the building. It is approximately 2500 square feet and has five bedrooms, 2 ½ bathrooms and a grand living room with a separate dining area. The building also has includes a full-time doorman, a live-in superintendent, laundry facilities and a bike room.
Holding the listing is Jonah Ramu Cohen with The Corcoran Group, according to the Post report.
In 1961, after twelve years of practicing corporate law, Morgenthau accepted an appointment from President John F. Kennedy as United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, as was reported by Wikipedia. In 1962, he was the Democratic nominee for Governor of New York, and resigned his federal office. After his defeat by the incumbent Governor Nelson Rockefeller, Morgenthau was reappointed U.S. Attorney and served in that position for the remainder of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.
In January 1969, following the election of President Richard Nixon, Morgenthau remained in office, and for months resisted increasingly public pressures from the Nixon Administration to resign. Wikipedia reported that he retained support from New York’s liberal Republican U.S. Senators Jacob K. Javits and Charles Goodell.
Morgenthau and his supporters claimed that replacing him would disrupt his work on vital cases, and that Nixon might be seeking to prevent Morgenthau from pursuing investigations that would prove embarrassing to the President or his friends, according to the Wikipedia report. Nonetheless, Morgenthau’s position became increasingly untenable. While well-regarded, he was after all a Democrat, thought to harbor political aspirations. Morgenthau’s insistence on remaining in office seemed increasingly unreasonable. He was eventually forced out of office at the end of 1969. Republican Whitney North Seymour Jr. was appointed as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
The Post reported that during his time as Manhattan district attorney, Morgenthau prosecuted some of the most infamous cases and criminals in the city’s history, including Mark David Chapman (John Lennon’s killer); Bernhard Goetz (the “subway vigilante”); Robert Chambers (the “preppie killer”); and he helped vacate the convictions of the “Central Park Five” in 2002.
Morgenthau’s most notable early case was the 1962 conviction of State Supreme Court Justice J. Vincent Keogh and Anthony (Tony Ducks) Corallo.
