Schinasi Mansion

The Schinasi House is a 12,000 square foot, 35 room marble mansion on Riverside Dr. in New York City. It was built in 1907 for Sephardic Jewish tobacco baron Morris Schinasi. The mansion was designed by Carnegie Hall architect William Tuthill and reportedly retains almost all of its historic detail, including a Prohibition-era trap door that once extended all the way to the river. The structure was added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 23, 1980 and designated a New York City Landmark on March 19, 1974. It has been cited as being the last remaining detached single-family house in Manhattan.Completed in 1909 at the northeast corner of West 107th Street and Riverside Drive, the three-story, 12,000 square foot mansion was designed in neo-French-Renaissance style by William Tuthill., the same architect who designed Carnegie Hall. Morris Schinasi, an Ottoman-Jewish immigrant who made his millions on cigarettes, commissioned the design and owned the thirty-five-room mansion until his death in 1928. After that the mansion changed hands several times until 1979 when Hans Smit, a Columbia University Law Professor, bought it and commissioned an extensive interior restoration. It was designated a New York City landmark on March 19, 1974. The mansion is one of a kind, with rich details in every niche of the building. Pineapple motifs, seen as a symbol of hospitality, are repeated throughout the ornamentation and there was originally a tunnel, now closed up, that led under ground to the Hudson River. Until 2013 it was inhabited by Hans Smit's son, Robert Smit, his two daughters, Jessie and Marley, and his son, Lennon.