An Upper East Side townhouse once owned by Allen Dulles, the controversial first civilian director of the Central Intelligence Agency, has hit the market for $9.99 million.
The turn-of-the-century home, at 239 E. 61st St., has also been owned by Maria Morra and Noah Gottdiener, executive chairman of Kroll, Inc. which was once hired by Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s first post-Cold War president, to find missing Communist Party billions. (The money was never officially found.)
The home comes with six bedrooms and 7½ baths. It has also served as the headquarters for the Seagram Foundation, which hosted many gatherings there.
Dulles, born in Watertown, NY, in 1893, was known as a Cold War warrior who served in the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to the CIA, in Switzerland. His brother, John Foster Dulles (dubbed “Dull, Duller, Dulles,” by Winston Churchill) served as President Eisenhower’s Secretary of State.
Before becoming a Cold War spymaster, Dulles was a white-shoe corporate lawyer in New York and his firm repped some wealthy German corporations. He is known for CIA coups in Iraq (1953), Guatemala (1954) and the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba (1961), which led to his resignation from the CIA.
As head of the CIA from 1953 to 1961, he is known for nefarious, and illegal, programs like Project MKUltra on mind control, which illegally experimented on humans from 1953 to 1973. Dulles later served on the Warren Commission, which concluded that President John F. Kennedy had been killed by a lone assassin with a single “magic” bullet, a theory now in doubt again thanks to a new book by a US Secret Service agent.
At 5,158 square feet, the home comes with an elevator, oversize windows, a rear garden and a terrace. Design details include handcrafted wood doors and intricate tile work overseen by interior designer Alex Papachristidis. The garden level opens to a foyer that leads to an eat-in chef’s kitchen, along with a salon, a fireplace and window walls that showcase the landscaped, irrigated garden.
Next is the parlor level, with a formal dining room featuring Venetian plaster applied by Kevin Paulsen, who worked on the Russian Tea Room. There’s also a walk-by wet bar that leads to the grand parlor with 11-foot-6-inch ceilings and original mantelpieces, along with another terrace off the rear overlooking the garden.
The third floor is currently the main bedroom suite and a library, while the fourth floor boasts additional bedrooms.
The basement is used for laundry, a wine cellar and a built-in cedar wardrobe.
The listing broker is Douglas Elliman’s M. Monica Novo and Melissa Post.
