1040

New York City

Jackie's 1040 Fifth Avenue

Apartment (15th Floor)

Photo by Tim Sukhenko 2011

Jackie fled Washington, DC in 1964 to escape the hounds of tourists camping outside of her door in Georgetown. With the guidance of financier 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 (Benjamin Moore #520 Spring Bud) and bright Scalamandre silk baldachino coverings by John Fowler using a "Tuileries" pattern in coral (see photo midway down this page). 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. Her library, shown above, was an inviting setting for guests including First Lady Hillary Clinton.

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 at 1040 (Marta Sgubin)

Caroline in her bedroom at 1040 and John with one of his birthday cake's in the 1040 dining room (late 1960s by 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 1996, 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.

In 2006, 1040 was sold to Glenn Dubin, a hedge fund manager for $32 million.

But more interestingly, Dubin was also chairman of the Robin Hood Foundation, a favored charity of the late John F. Kennedy Jr., who also had a seat on its board and who grew up in the apartment Mr. Dubin is bought.

Reproduction of Coffee Table from Jackie's 1040

Jackie's 1040 bedroom fabric - Jardin de Tuileres by Scalamandre #11067-001

87% silk, 12 screen process

Jackie's 1040 bedroom paint color - Benjamin Moore's #520 Spring Bud

Jackie's 1040 Fifth Avenue Apartment Layout (NY Daily Post 1995?)

(Prior to Purchase by Koch in 1996)

Jackie's Bedroom (lower right)

Caroline's Bedroom (upper right, end of hall)

John Jr. Bedroom (left of Caroline's)

Marta Sgubin (also a resident of 1040)

Another View of the 1040 Layout (Screenland Magazine Oct. 1970)

1040 Fifth Avenue Layout (Cochran Real Estate Listing for Koch 2005)

Layout by Cochran (when listed by Koch)

1971 View of Jackie's 1040 Dining Room. Source House Beautiful Magazine.

1971 View of Jackie's 1040 Library. Source House Beautiful Magazine.

1973 View of Jackie's 1040 Library (note changes to furniture and rug from prior photo from 1971). Source: VOGUE June 1973.

1973 Views of Jackie's 1040 Library (note changes to furniture and rug from prior photo from 1971). Source: VOGUE June 1973.

Additional Sothebys Auction Photos Below of 1040

Jackie's 1040 Foyer

Jackie's Piano in 1040 Dining Room (she did not play)

View of 1040 Dining Room Fireplace (see reproduction table above)

View of 1040 Living Room Art Display

View of 1040 Living Room (where Jackie's wake was held)

View of 1040 Dining Room (table to the far right)

Another 1040 Living Room View (see painting above with children on couch)

Jackie's 1040 Library (Test Ban Treaty Desk on left). Source House Beautiful.

Marta Sgubin in Jackie's 1040 Dining Room.

Jackie's 1040 Dining Room (Chairs Below)

From Vanity Fair September 1999

In the dining room of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis's apartment at 1040 Fifth Avenue, a little after 10:15 p.m. on May 19, 1994, John told family and friends that she was dead. Minutes later, a desperate keening could be heard from a back hallway. It sounded as if it might have been one of the old Greek maids from the days of Onassis. It turned out to be a woman no one knew, silver-haired, odd-looking, who suddenly appeared in the front hallway and embraced John. He at first took her to be one of his Bouvier cousins. But when he gallantly apologized for not knowing her, the woman told him first one, then another obviously fake name, and he realized that she had come in off the street, from the crowds that had been logjammed behind blue sawhorses for days on the sidewalk below.

That scene in the hallway could have played out in so many ways, ugly or angry, weird or graceful. Good manners can help at a time like that; so can kindness, patience, and experience with the chaos that was always at the edge of his family's life. By the time his mother died, he had learned simplicity too, which was her greatness. But to know how to handle an intruder at your mother's deathbed, you need above all to be true to yourself. He gently told the woman, "Madam, you don't belong here."