On the Upper East Side, a stately landmarked townhouse seeks $18.45M

A stately Upper East Side mansion with ties—distant ones, but ties nevertheless—to the Gimbels department store family hit the market for $18.45 million, and it’s quite a beaut. As the brokerbabble notes, “this is the kind of townhouse you can wait decades for,” assuming you’re in the market for a grand $18 million home.

First, the backstory: It was once the home of Elinor Gimbel, who was married to Louis S. Gimbel Jr., grandson of the famed department store’s founder, Adam. Elinor herself came from a prominent family: Her parents were both beer bigwigs, with her mother an heir to the Liebmann brewery fortune (they created Rheingold Beer), and her father the head of S.S. Steiner, a hops company that’s still around to this day.

As for the home itself, it dates back to the 1860s, according to the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s designation report—it was declared a landmark in 1968, along with several similar buildings on the same block. The report notes the home’s “subdued charm and warm mellowness,” thanks to its red brick exterior, and the period Italianite details that are well-preserved to this day. “[T]hese row houses have dignity, individual character and charm and that they lend refinement to the street and to the neighborhood,” the LPC concluded.

The current owner purchased the house in 1997, and in the two decades since has made plenty of upgrades: Per the listing, the home has seven bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms, a chef’s kitchen, a formal dining room with a fireplace, a 36-foot-wide living room with even more fireplaces, and two distinct outdoor spaces: an “astounding north-facing garden which measures 34 x 37 feet at its deepest points” and “a deep forecourt of terra cotta stone shaded by mature trees.”

All in all, it’s a pretty spectacular place. Brown Harris Stevens’s Paula del Nunzio has the listing.

Listing: 163 East 78th Street [BHS]