Schinasi Mansion, ca. 1909.

Built in 1909 for the Turkish-born tobacco magnate Morris Schinasi, this mansion is the largest single-family residence on Riverside Drive. Schinasi enlisted William Tuthill, the architect of Carnegie Hall, to produce a heavily ornamented, French Renaissance style residence in white marble. Some sources claim the home included a Prohibition-era trap door leading to the Hudson River below, but these claims do not appear in Landmarks Preservation Commission documents.

After Schinasi’s death, the home was a finishing school, before being acquired by Columbia University. The house was bought privately by a Columbia law professor in 1979 and sold again in 2013.