Fancy Facade

By Cassie Carroll

The Benjamin N. Duke House, also called the Duke–Semans Mansion, is a landmark mansion located at 1009 Fifth Avenue at East 82nd Street in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City. I drew this while sitting on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The building’s exterior is featured in several movies. In 1996 flick First Wives Club the Duke-Semans Mansion is the Upper East Side townhouse where wealthy socialite Gunilla Garson Goldberg (Maggie Smith) lived. Shelly Stewart (Sarah Jessica Parker) heads to the mansion for a “super social luncheon” with Gunilla. In The French Connection, the property portrays an apartment building where actor Dom Ameche and a criminal named Weinstock (Harold Gray) are both said to reside. The townhouse also portrayed the home of Henry Turner (Harrison Ford) and his family in the 1991 drama Regarding Henry.