Historic Murder-Suicide New York Mansion Lists at a Discounted Price of $26 Million

A historic Manhattan mansion with a murderous past is newly listed for $26 million. The four-story, Upper East Side townhouse was built in 1901 by a wealthy novelist, Paul Leicester Ford, and his wife Grace.

Ford wrote fan favorites in the late 1800s such as "Janice Meredith: A Story of the American Revolution," which broke publishing records at the time. 

Trouble beset the couple when Ford’s brother, then-famous track athlete Malcolm Ford, grew angry with him for inheriting their father’s fortune, according to a New York real estate history blog. Malcolm had been left out of the will. In an act of resentment, he shot Ford in his study at his East 77th Street home just a year after it was built — and then shot himself. Ford’s widow continued to live there with their child, but they eventually moved.

The home has changed hands a number of times between elite New York families. It was renovated under the ownership of Esther Slater Welles, heiress to the Slater Mill fortune, who purchased it with her husband Joseph Kerrigan in 1926. Welles added a massive staircase said to be worth $400,000 alone.

In the later half of the 20th century, the mansion housed a number of organizations and businesses such as the Palestine Resistance Fund, two publishing companies, a recording studio and a French restaurant called Cello. Many of its original interiors have been gutted, but their remnants can be seen in ornate wall carvings and stained glass windows in its various living rooms and parlors.

“The building has great bones,” said the listing by Loy Carlos of Nest Seekers. The 14,500-square-foot property is commercially zoned and ideal for an art gallery, diplomatic residence, school, club or business, said Carlos. But the buyer would also have the opportunity to convert the building back into a single-family “grand mansion” he added.

Its current owner is the Dalva Brothers, a French furniture and antiques business. The townhouse was first listed for $35 million with Douglas Elliman in 2021 but was taken off the market earlier this year. The building was re-listed on Oct. 20 with Nest Seekers at a discounted price.