By:  Serach Nissim

A rare 35-foot-wide Beaux-Arts home on the Upper West Side is about to be listed, asking $24 million.

As reported by Gimme Shelter, the stately red brick and limestone mansion at 337 Riverside Drive, on the corner of West 106th Street, will hit the market shortly.  The home is about to be put up for sale by Sherry Bronfman, the ex-wife of Seagram billionaire heir Edgar Bronfman Jr, who served as CEO of Warner Music Group.  This is the home where Mrs. Bronfman raised her three children–  Hannah, a DJ, entrepreneur, and social media influencer; Benjamin, a musician/entrepreneur; and Vanessa.

The home is also the site of this year’s design event—the Kips Bay Decorator Show House New York.  The event which will raise money for the Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club, will open to the public on May 11th for a month, and will feature 22 top designers and architects including Penny Drue Baird, Dessins LLC and Sasha Bikoff Interior Design.  Bronfman, a Chicago-born actress and philanthropist, has said that bringing the Kips Bay Decorator Show House to her home “is both exciting and in sync with our personal values of giving back.”  Bronfman is well-known for her roles in movies including “Shaft” (1971), “Brave New World” (1980) and “Unsung Hollywood” (2014).  Her daughter-in-law is the famous rapper M.I.A, and her son-in-law is Brendan Fallis, the famed Canadian DJ and Entrepreneur.   Edgar Bronfman Jr and Mrs. Bronfman were divorced in 1991.

As per the NY Post, the Bronfman family has owned the residence, known as the River Mansion, since the 1970’s. Edgar Bronfman Jr had purchased the mansion in 1978 for $5.6 million, making it the family residence.   Former residents of the home included Shakespearean actress Julia Marlowe who had purchased the home in 1903 for $68,000; in 1906 ownership was transferred to the wife of businessman Lothar Faber.

During the Depression, the mansion was split into boarding homes, and many of the residents suffered dire fates—including a doctor who jumped out his fourth story window and died in 1935, and in 1936 painter Michael De Santis who moved in but soon died of a brain tumor.  The home, built in 1902, is one of seven Beaux-Arts mansions, located at 330 to 337 Riverside Drive, known as the Seven Beauties—described in Daniel J. Wakin’s book, “The Man With the Sawed-Off Leg and Other Tales of a New York City Block”.

The five-story mansion boasts 10,000-square-feet of space, five-bedrooms, a grand foyer, a parlor, a dining room, a library, multiple kitchens, a wine room and cellar, a media room, a roof deck and an elevator. It features bay windows with impressive Hudson River views. The home’s exterior main entrance is quite impressive, flanked by columns with intricate carvings inspired by late 16th-century French architecture. An original iron fence, from Marlowe’s time, surrounds the home.