(Photo: Courtesy of The Corcoran Group)

135 EAST 91ST STREET
The Facts: Eleven-room, five-story townhouse.
Asking Price: $12.5 million.
Taxes: $23,957 per year.
Agent: Kerry Martin, the Corcoran Group.

(Photo: Getty Images)

Jacob Ruppert, one of the wealthiest brewers in New York, built this house in 1885 as a wedding present for his daughter. (Three decades later, he made another wise business move, buying the New York Yankees and signing Boston’s Babe Ruth. The Ruppert Towers complex in Yorkville occupies his brewery’s site.) Though it’s renovated, the house retains its moldings and floors from that era.

The house’s more contemporary claim to fame comes from the fifties, when the house was owned by Ruth and Augustus Goetz, screenwriters of the 1958 film Stage Struck. The film was directed by Sidney Lumet, who with his then-wife, Gloria Vanderbilt, may have stayed there for a bit; later on, Lumet bought the house from the Goetzes (after his split with Vanderbilt) and held onto it until 1992.

Related:

• Archive: “Real Estate”
• Articles by S.Jhoanna Robledo
• Table of Contents: May 5, 2008 issue of New York | Subscribe!