1040 Fifth Ave. New York

By Steve Brawley

Jackie fled Washington, DC in 1964 to escape the hounds of tourists camping outside of her door in Georgetown. With the guidance of financer Andre Meyer she found an apartment at 1040 Fifth Avenue in New York, not too far from her sister Lee Radziwill. She would raise Caroline and John here and find it a safe haven filled with her favorite books, art objects and family mementos.

Those who visited her on the 15th floor found it warm and inviting, much like her private quarters in the White House.

Behind the sleek facade of spare, modern elegance was a woman who surrounded herself with boudoir femininity. The apartment, with its red and gold drapes, fauteuils cabriolet, decorative drawings, floral cache-pots, its dining table dressed in flowery fabric and chairs in chintz, already seems to belong to another era - now that Upper East Side apartments are obligatorily filled with modern art.

Jackie was not a modern collector except with a magpie eye for pretty things. Only a 1960 Robert Rauschenberg gouache of the presidential couple with emblems of America struck an abstract modern note.

But what a taste for the exotic! The woman who insisted on seeing the Taj Mahal by moonlight and riding an elephant with her sister, Lee, on a trip to Pakistan was drawn to miniatures of Mogul gardens.

Her bedroom was modeled after Marie Harriman's Georgtown bedroom where Jackie stayed after moving from the White House - with pale green walls and bright Scalamandre glazed cotton baldachino coverings by John Fowler using a "Tuileries" pattern in salmon. The bed a gift from her best friend Bunny Melon.

She also had a passion for chinoiserie, scattering black-laquered cabinets and a screen with cherry-blossom tendrils among the Louis XVI ormulu. The porcelain include Chinese plates intensely decorated with birds and flowers and the discreet Davenport version with sepia traces of foliage around an empress with parasol. The terraces would bloom with crabapple trees in blue planters.

She was perhaps not as complex as her inscrutable exterior suggested. A traditional upscale childhood left a legacy of a careless appreciation of fine things (the apartment and its objects were well-worn) and a lasting passion for ponies.

Horsey pictures filled her home, from the fine equestrian portrait over the marbled fireplace, through the charcoal drawings of horses' heads and the tally-ho Spode dinner plates of fox hunters galloping through a green landscape.

As one of the most watched women in history, she turned the tables on unsuspecting people down below on Fifth Avenue by checking them out with her high power telescope.

She could gaze with pride from her own bedroom window down onto the MET and see the home of the historic Temple of Dendur which she helped secure for the museum and America.

Painting by Aaron Shikler of Jackie in the 1040

Living Room with John and Caroline

As in life, the apartment would be a safe haven for her own farewell. She chose to check herself out of the hospital so she could die privately surrounded by her family and friends at home. Her wake would take place in her living room.  Her son John would announce her passing on 1040's front steps.

Today, hundreds of people own items from 1040. The famous auction would make one of the most private women very public. Today jewlery and furniture from 1040 are copied and sold worldwide.

History of 1040 - 15th Floor:

• 1964: Mrs. Lowell Weicker sells apartment to Jackie for $200,000
• 1964: Jackie renovates apartment for $125,000
• 1964-1994: Jackie's primary residence ($14,000 a year co-op fees)
• 1996: John and Caroline put apartment on market after famous auction of Jackie's personal items
• 1996: $9.5 million purchase by David Koch - $5 million in renovations (interior design by Alberto Pinto)
• 2006: $32 million purchase by Glen Dubin

Christmas Eve at 1040 (Marta Sgubin)

One of the tallest of the limestone-clad apartment houses on Fifth Avenue, this prominent 17-story structure has one of the most distinctive rooflines along the avenue.

The building was erected in 1930 and was designed by Rosario Candela, one of the city's most prominent designers of luxury apartment buildings in the late 1920's and early 1930's.

The asymmetrical roof, which is setback and clad in a pale yellow brick, has several tall arches whose openings were filled nicely with huge windows in the late 1990's in a remodeling of the spectacular penthouse. The handsome rooftop design is somewhat similar to the roof at Ten Gracie Square, which was erected in the same year and designed by Van Wart & Wein with Pennington & Lewis.

The canopied entrance has very attractive cast-iron doors and extensive sidewalk landscaping.

The facade, which has had many repairs, is relatively plain except for several sculpted faces at the fifth story. The large building has only 27 apartments and has had many prominent residents, including Jackie.

Mr. Koch, who purchased the apartment in 1995, said that he remained keenly aware of Mrs. Onassis' former presence at 1040 Fifth. "For a while there, we sort of felt her spirit in the apartment," he said.

"The way she had it decorated, the arrangement of the rooms. It was hers, and it gave me a feeling about her. I met so many people after I bought the apartment who told me they had been there for dinner and told me what it was like to be entertained in the apartment, and I almost had a sense of history about it," said Koch.

"Her two children grew up in the apartment. We had our son in Caroline's old room and our daughter in John Jr.'s room. I was always aware of that. There was sort of a force that is hard to describe that kind of affected me," Koch said.

The apartment was in need of complete renovation, and Mr. Koch and his wife, Julia, hired the interior designer Alberto Pinto to gut it, fix it up and furnish it, a process that Mr. Koch estimated cost $5 million to $10 million. They changed the layout, replaced the wiring and the plumbing and installed central air-conditioning in a project that lasted four years. They lived in the apartment for six years, raising their two small children there.

He said that after buying the apartment, he had numerous requests from the media to photograph or film Mrs. Onassis' former home, and that he refused. "I thought I would have been dishonoring her memory to have done that, and I never let any press in there at all," he said. "I would hope anybody I sell it to would feel the same way."

The Fifth Avenue apartment has four bedrooms, two dressing rooms, a staff room, a library, living room, dining room, conservatory, two terraces, three fireplaces, five and a half bathrooms and a wine room.

Layout (After Koch Renovation)

Layout by Cochran (when listed by Koch) - Additional Sothebys Auction Photos Below

Jackie's Piano in Dining Room (she did not play)

View of Dining Room Fireplace (see reproduction table above)

View of Living Room Art Display

View of Living Room (where Jackie's wake was held)

View of Dining Room (table to the far right)

Another Living Room View (see painting above with children on couch)