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Building in Manhattan, New York

The architects J. Armstrong Stenhouse and C. P. H. Gilbert designed the house at 1 East 91st Street for the family of financier Otto Hermann Kahn in the neo Italian Renaissance style. It is four stories high with a basement and the house measures about 100 feet (30 m) to its roof. The house was modeled after the Palazzo della Cancelleria of the Papal Chancellery in Rome.

The house was built of French limestone from St. Quentin, which is textured. In general, the facade has lead came glass or zinc came glass windows. The exterior faces of each window frame are made of molded limestone, while the interior faces are made of wood. The use of rusticated blocks and iron grillwork was intended to make the structure appear like a Renaissance palazzo. There is a niche at either end of the driveway, as well as a coffered ceiling, which is made of stucco. At the extreme eastern end of the southern elevation is a rusticated wall, with service areas behind the walls. The stone facade of the courtyard is decorated with elements such as arches and stairways; this was a contrast to the lightwells of similar mansions, which did not have decorative facades. The courtyard's southeastern corner has a water tank and a staircase tower.

The house has a floor area of and was one of Manhattan's largest private houses, It has been cited as containing a total of 66 rooms or 80 rooms. as well as an oak paneled library and spacious reception room. Original photographs of the more formal rooms taken during the Kahns' occupancy show them decorated in an 18th century French and Italian style; many of the original decorations remain intact. The first through third stories are connected to the Burden House's rear rooms via a glass passageway that is set back from the street. Since the floor levels are uneven, the connection is slightly sloped. The second basement had electrical generators and a heating plant. The first basement had servants' living quarters, a kitchen, and a pantry, as well as 40 bedrooms for servants. The entrance leads to an entry hall with limestone walls supporting a plaster groin vault; this hall is decorated with pediments, niches, and cornice moldings. There is a grand staircase on the western wall and a smaller staircase and elevator on the eastern wall. The rest of the first floor was used as reception spaces. On the third and fourth stories, there were 15 bedrooms, each with en suite dressing rooms and bathrooms.

In December 1898, the industrialist Andrew Carnegie bought all of the lots on Fifth Avenue between 90th and 92nd streets, with the intent of building his mansion on some of these plots. Carnegie ultimately decided to erect his mansion only on the plots between 90th and 91st streets. He retained ownership of several nearby lots to protect his home's value, selling them only to "congenial neighbors". Carnegie tried to split up the parcel at the northeast corner of 91st Street and Fifth Avenue in 1906, with plans to sell half of it to the politician Lloyd S. Bryce. Sloane and his daughters all opposed the sale, and they filed a lawsuit which prevented Carnegie from selling that plot to anyone. Bryce decided not to buy the corner parcel.

The Jewish American financier Otto Hermann Kahn was the next owner of the lot at 91st Street and Fifth Avenue. Kahn, who had immigrated to the U. S. in 1893, was a senior partner at the investment bank Kuhn, Loeb and Co and there were rumors that he would move out of the U. S. altogether. News media reported in May 1913 that Kahn had purchased the lot at the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and 91st Street from Carnegie. Carnegie sold the corner of Fifth Avenue and 91st Street to the Lawyers' Realty Company (representing Kahn) in June 1913. Kahn paid $725,000 and took a $675,000 mortgage loan from Carnegie. After the Sloanes dropped their lawsuit against Carnegie,

Kahn hired Gilbert as the house's architect in August 1913, He also planned to import French stone. Work was briefly halted before resuming in May 1914, although Gilbert had still not received bids for the house's construction at the time. Ultimately, René Sergent was hired as a consulting engineer, while the Thompson–Starrett Company was hired as the general contractor. Work commenced in July 1914, Construction of the house itself had begun by early 1916; The New York Times said the same year that Kahn's house was one of the largest to be built in the neighborhood in several years. The Kahn House was nearly completed by early 1917, though Kahn was still listed as living on 68th Street.

Otto Kahn's house was completed around 1918, He, his wife Adelaide (Addie), and their children Maud, Margaret, Gilbert, and Roger mainly lived at the 91st Street mansion afterward. The 91st Street mansion housed the family's 22 servants as well. Otto Kahn, who was a major donor to French charities during World War I, also invited French sailors and troops to his house. Despite Kahn's extreme wealth, The house was decorated with tapestries, in addition to paintings from Kahn's art collection, such as Vittore Carpaccio's late 15th century portrait St. Eustace. In 1919, the first full year after the house was finished, it was valued at $1.35 million. The house hosted events such as a debutante ball for the Kahns' daughter Margaret in 1920, an exhibition of Persian art in 1927, and Margaret's wedding in 1928. When Otto and Addie's youngest son Roger formed a jazz orchestra in 1924, the orchestra practiced in the mansion. Other events hosted at the house during the 1920s included musical and dance performances; meetings; charitable benefits; and parties. Because the house did not have its own garage, Kahn hired Gilbert in 1927 to design a 10 car garage for him at 422 East 89th Street. By the late 1920s, many of Fifth Avenue's mansions were being demolished to make way for apartments; although the Kahn House remained standing, an adjacent house had been replaced with a 13 story apartment building. Kahn reportedly lost over $50 million during the Wall Street Crash of 1929, although the family retained ownership of the house. and business dinners. The Convent of the Sacred Heart, a private girls' school, began negotiating for the house in 1932. Kahn negotiated a tentative agreement with the school in early 1934, one month before he died. he bequeathed everything to his children and allowed them to sell his real estate. When he died, his real estate was valued at $216,375, excluding the 91st Street mansion. At the time of Kahn's death, the Kahn House and several other houses along the block were restricted to residential use because of a covenant placed by Andrew Carnegie. provided that the height of the house was not increased.

In May 1934, the Convent of the Sacred Heart paid $900,000 for the house and sold its existing building on Madison Avenue to the Oheka Corporation. One critic called the sale a sign of the transformation of the surrounding neighborhood, The school filed plans in May 1934 to convert the house into a school building for $15,000. The modifications, designed by Frederick Rinn, included a new basement entrance on Fifth Avenue, a mezzanine above one of the basement rooms, as well as a new refectory, plumbing, and stairs. The Convent of the Sacred Heart did not have to pay taxes on the building because it was an educational and religious institution. lectures, and film screenings. Every December, the school invited the public to attend Christmas tree lighting ceremonies in the lower stories. Sacred Heart acquired the neighboring Burden House in 1940, using that house as a boarding school. By the late 1960s, the school's nuns lived on the fifth floor of the house. After Sacred Heart sought to raise $90,000 for an expansion of the school in 1966, students' parents donated $150,000. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) consequently designated the Burden and Kahn houses as landmarks. After a Sacred Heart alumnus requested permission to host her wedding at the Burden House in 1973, Sacred Heart began renting out both houses' ballrooms and the Kahn House's courtyard for weddings outside of school hours. The houses also hosted seminars, parties, photo shoots, and benefit parties. There were also occasional tours of the Kahn House, In general, visitors not affiliated with the school could only enter the house by appointment. as well as from events such as tours and Christmas tree sales. Building Conservation Associates also examined the Kahn House's facade in the 1990s and found that it had been damaged over the years by the acidity of the air. As such, Buttrick, White, and Burtis also supervised a restoration of the facade at a cost of $1.3 million; the project included cleaning the stone and infilling some of the larger holes. By the 2000s, the Kahn House was known as the Convent of the Sacred Heart's Duchesne Residence. The house contains Convent of the Sacred Heart's middle and upper schools as of 2024.

Upon the house's completion, the Architectural Review praised the mansion as "a remarkable example of well balanced re adjustment in those aesthetic elements that are found in architecture of the early sixteenth century in Italy". The magazine further deemed J. Armstrong Stenhouse to have "achieved a work which ranks as the foremost of its kind in this country." The Landmarks Preservation Commission described the building as "the finest Italian Renaissance style mansion in New York City". and Women's Wear Daily said the building was "an architecturally perfect sample of Italian Renaissance architecture". A critic for The New York Times described the Kahn and Burden houses in 1972 as having "what may be the most lordly rooms any New York schoolchild studies in". The historian Christopher Gray said in 1990 that the Kahn House was the "last and grandest" of the houses on the surrounding block, though he later wrote that it was "very reserved" compared with other structures like the Warburg House one block north. as was the 2009 film Duplicity. The LPC selected the Kahn House in 1963 as one of 300 tentative city landmarks, and the American Institute of Architects included the building in an exhibit of the city's historic buildings in 1967. The LPC first proposed the Carnegie Hill Historic District in 1966, which would have included both the Kahn and Burden houses. The LPC began considering the buildings as individual city landmarks in 1967, The LPC designated the Kahn and Burden mansions as individual landmarks in February 1974, When the Carnegie Hill Historic District was expanded in 1993, both structures were included in the expanded district. The Kahn and Burden mansions were collectively added to the New York State Register of Historic Places on June 28, 2006, and to the National Register of Historic Places on September 12, 2006.