Gilded Age mansions, once nearly extinct, make a quiet comeback in Manhattan: ‘The best of both worlds’
NY Post
By the late 1990s, Randall Rackson had already done the apartment thing. He’d lived on Central Park West, in rooms stacked above those of others.
But one evening altered the course of his future.
“I went to a party at somebody’s townhouse,” Rackson, 66, told The Post. “And I was, like, ‘That’s the best of all worlds. This is a house like I grew up in, but it’s in Manhattan.’”
Soon after, Rackson, founder of the derivatives business for insurance and financial services giant AIG, began hunting for a townhouse of his own — though little did he know he’d stumble upon something coveted in New York City.
Still, the search was frustrating. Kitchens were in the basement, because staff did the cooking there; top floors had low ceilings, because staff lived there.
“Most of them are structured in a way that people lived back then and they don’t live now,” he said.
