The Payne Whitney House is a historic building at 972 Fifth Avenue, south of 79th Street, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City.

Completed in 1909 as a private residence for businessman William Payne Whitney and his family, the building has housed the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States since 1952.

The Whitney house was commissioned in 1902 by William's uncle Colonel Oliver Hazard Payne as a wedding gift.

Construction took so long that, in the meantime, the couple's two children John (Jock) and Joan were born and Stanford White was killed.

The Payne Whitney House is at 972 Fifth Avenue in the Upper East Side neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City.

[9][12] Cook intended the block to house first-class residences, not high-rises, and only sold lots for the construction of private dwellings.

[1][16][23] The facade details were evocative of those of the Joseph Pulitzer House on 73rd Street and, by extension, those of Palazzo Pesaro, Venice.

[24] The ground floor contains blocks of rusticated stone, with a large marble entryway at the center flanked by a window on either side.

Flanking the doorway are molded floral designs, as well as vertical pilasters with lions' heads at their bases and acanthus-and-maple-leaf panels above.

John La Farge designed four stained-glass windows themed to the seasons, while muralist James Wall Finn painted the decorations in entrance rotunda.

[6][7] It is still used as a filming location; for instance, the house has appeared in episodes of the TV shows Law & Order and The Blacklist.

[29] A white marble staircase leads to the second floor;[6][7] it was originally decorated with a bronze railing, a wall frieze, and a carved-wood ceiling.

[40] It went relatively unnoticed until 1990, when graduate student James Draper speculated that the work was by Bertoldo di Giovanni, a mentor of Michelangelo's.

[38][39] The Venetian Room, measuring 14 feet 10 inches (4.52 m) square,[42] is just east of the rotunda, on the south wall of the house.

[42][44] In place of a cornice, the coved ceiling was originally decorated with a latticework pattern containing plants and enameled flowers.

[47] Architecture magazine described the second-floor reception room as having "some excellent antique columns, a staircase with beautifully designed bronze rail, and a truly wonderful frieze and carved wood ceiling".

[57][22] Media at the time reported that William's uncle, Oliver Payne, would erect a mansion for the newlyweds as a wedding gift.

[24][58] In March 1902, Oliver Payne paid Henry H. Cook $525,000 for a lot measuring 70 by 100 feet (21 by 30 m) on the east side of Fifth Avenue between 78th and 79th Streets.

[60] In September 1902, McKim, Mead & White submitted plans to the Manhattan Bureau of Buildings for a six-story marble-and-granite house at 972 Fifth Avenue, which would cost $195,000.

Helen said to White: "It made me so disgusted I felt like chucking the whole thing and getting a nice ready-made house that I could have when I wanted it.

[73] Payne Whitney purchased a small parcel on the south side of the site, measuring 20 by 100 feet (6.1 by 30.5 m), from his neighbor James B. Duke in September 1909.

[60] Payne Whitney lived at 972 Fifth Avenue until his sudden death in 1927 at Greentree, the family estate in Manhasset, New York.

[82] Through the 1930s, Helen Hay Whitney continued to host social events, including a bazaar to benefit the unemployed,[83] a fashion show for charity,[84] and a supper dance honoring film producer David O.

[86] Helen had her favorite space in the mansion, the Venetian Room, removed and preserved before her death; the decorations were placed in 75 crates and stored at Greentree.

[1] The LPC also added the house, in 1977, to the Metropolitan Museum Historic District, a collection of 19th- and early 20th-century mansions around Fifth Avenue between 78th and 86th Streets.

[98] Four layers of floor surfaces, the oldest dating from the 1950s, were removed as part of the restoration, and the physical space containing the room was repaired.

[108] The Albertine Books bookstore and reading room opened in September 2014, functioning as a cultural space with public events.

[98] David Carrard Lowe, in a 1992 book about White's work, described the curved facade as having "an almost mannerist quality", emphasized by its vertical pilasters, horizontal entablatures, and cornices.

Architecture magazine wrote that the decorations were "an illustration of his incomparable cleverness in discovering and purchasing antiques, valuable not only from a standpoint of their costliness, but also because of their intrinsic beauty".

[28][49] When the Venetian Room was restored in 1998, John Russell wrote for The New York Times that, while he considered the design "imperfect", "White's appetite for life is everywhere present, as is his sense of affectionate companionship".