Stuyvesant Fish House, 25 East 78th Street; ca. 1900.

Stuyvesant Fish was born in 1851, the son of prominent New York politician Hamilton Fish, who was then a US Senator from New York and would later be appointed Secretary of State under President Ulysses S. Grant.

Rather than politics, the junior Fish took to business: he became a director of the Illinois Central Railroad at age 26, and was later appointed its President. While Fish's tenure was immensely profitable and secured his family's fortune, it was his wife Mamie's knack for entertaining that earned their place at the apex of New York society.

Mamie (Marion Graves Anthon Fish) was known for hosting over-the-top dinners and balls in New York and Newport, which were known to include vaudeville entertainment and appearances by rented live animals. (One notable event was given in honor of "Prince Del Drago of Corsica," who turned out to be a monkey. Another featured an elephant. You had to be there.)

By the 1890s, the Fishes were ready to upgrade their Gramercy Park townhouse to a fashionable uptown address, and commissioned leading firm McKim, Mead & White to design a new mansion, fit for entertaining. The five-story Italian Renaissance-style palazzo was completed in 1898, and features intricate brickwork and carved limestone ornamentation.

After Stuyvesant Fish died 1923, the 78th Street mansion passed to a series of owners: a French magazine, a private school, and, from 1952, the Atran Center for Jewish Culture of the Jewish Labor Committee.

Since 2006, it has been owned by Bloomberg Philanthropies.