Woolworth Mansion Asking Price Drops to $50M

A historic Upper East Side townhouse just logged a price chop.

The property at 4 East 80th Street, known as the Woolworth Mansion, is asking just under $50 million — down roughly $10 million from its asking price when it hit the market in November, according to a listing on Realtor.com.

It’s a far cry from the $90 million the sellers, the family of the late fitness mogul Lucille Roberts, sought when it listed in 2011, though the home hasn’t been offered for sale in more than a decade.

The discount comes as another Gilded Age mansion located one block away found a buyer after four years on the market. The townhouse at 973 Fifth Avenue landed a signed contract last month, just two weeks after the listing broker, Corcoran’s Carrie Chiang, lowered the asking price to $50 million.

Listing broker Adam Modlin of the Modlin Group said the Woolworth Mansion was the “best value” for a home of its size following the nearby sale, where he brought the buyer. He noted that the asking price works out to about $2,500 per square foot.

Roberts, who founded a chain of all-women gyms, and her husband, commercial real estate investor Bob Roberts, bought the Woolworth Mansion for $6 million in 1995 from the Young Men’s Philanthropic League. The couple spent years restoring the home before Lucille’s death in 2003.

The Roberts family first tried to offload the property in 2011. Listed it for $90 million, the sprawling 20,000-square-foot mansion was the most expensive home on the market, and if it had sold for that price, would have made the priciest townhouse sale in New York City history.

But a deal never materialized, and the family pulled the townhouse off the market two years later. Before they stopped shopping the property, a disgruntled former employee of Lucille’s gyms was suspected of vandalizing the home in 2012 by throwing white paint on its exterior and shooting it with BB pellets.

Kevin Roberts, Bob and Lucille’s son, told the Wall Street Journal he lived in the home with his father until 2016. Bob left a few years later and now lives between the Hamptons and Palm Beach. The Roberts found a renter for the home in 2021 for $80,000 per month.

Frank Woolworth, who made his fortune from “Five-and-Dime” stores, commissioned the Charles P.H. Gilbert-designed townhouse for his daughter, Helena Woolworth McCann, in 1915. He also had two adjacent homes built for his other children, all of which once formed a compound with his nearby property until it was demolished in the 1920s.

The 35-foot-wide mansion spans seven stories and has nine bedrooms, 11 bathrooms and three kitchens. The home’s interior includes a mosaic floor, stained glass skylight, molding and a wood-paneled dining room fit for 50 people. It also features a gym, library, elevator, solarium and sauna.