Perera House

49 East 80th Street | Upper East Side | built 1925

Open on the map9 entries

The lot about 1940
About 1940. Via 1940s.nyc
The lot about 1985
About 1985. Via 80s.nyc

The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

  1. 1930

    Harry Allan Jacobs gives the Perera house an Art Deco brick front and interior

    Jacobs finished the house in 1930 on the site where the Brown family's home had been torn down. He told a Times reporter the house expressed a modern spirit in both decoration and materials. Outside, a carved wave-pattern frieze separates the ground and second floors, with a band of sawtooth brick set between terra cotta. Inside he designed light fixtures shaped like shells, geometric forms and scrolls, and black-and-white marble floors laid in a checkerboard.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1930

    Banker Lionello Perera commissions a new house on East 80th Street

    Venetian-born banker Lionello Perera hires architect Harry Allan Jacobs to design a house at 49 East 80th Street, replacing the William Adams Brown family's residence on the site. Completed in 1930, the brick building features Art Deco details such as a carved wave-pattern frieze, a geometric grille entrance, and checkerboard marble floors.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1933

    October 14

    The Pereras celebrate a double wedding at their East 80th Street home

    On October 14, 1933, the Perera family marks a double wedding: Lionello Perera Jr. marries Dorothy Fern Bittel, while his sister Nina marries Charles Wood Collier. Lionello Sr., who retired from banking the year before, dies in 1942 of a heart attack at Pennsylvania Station.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1940

    April 1

    Carolyn Perera hosts a musicale at home to fund scholarships for war refugees

    The Pereras' house was a regular venue for charity events. Carolyn Perera, who founded the Italian Welfare League and headed the Henry Street Settlement Music School, held a reception here on November 16, 1934 for the league. On April 1, 1940 she gave a musicale in the house to raise scholarship money for war refugees. In March 1942 she hosted a tea for the Henry Street Settlement.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1944

    Goldman Sachs banker Walter Sachs buys the house after Lionello Perera's death

    After Lionello Perera died in 1942, the banker Walter E. Sachs, a descendant of a founder of Goldman Sachs, moved into the house. It was first leased in 1943 and bought outright the next year. Sachs lived there with his wife Mary Williamson Sachs until they divorced, and Mary stayed on until February 1970.

    Source: Wikipedia

  6. 1970

    Barbra Streisand fills the house with cranberry glass and calls in Erte

    Streisand moved her cranberry glass collection into the house and gave her three-year-old son Jason a playroom with a vintage ice cream parlor bar, a gum machine and a spool cabinet. She installed leaded-glass panels taken from a Victorian gazebo she had bought off the set of her film On a Clear Day You Can See Forever. She also planned to paint the library's walnut paneling a rose shade, and she consulted the artist Erte about the dining room.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  7. 1970

    Streisand hosts a 3,000-guest reception for Bella Abzug at her new house

    Soon after moving in, Barbra Streisand held a reception at the house for Bella Abzug that drew 3,000 people. By May 1970 she had started renovating and was already seeking a tenant for it, after saying she bought a multistory house only because she had little choice.

    “Streisand hosted a reception for US Congress member Bella Abzug, attended by 3,000 people, shortly after moving in.”

    Source: Wikipedia

  8. 1970

    January

    Barbra Streisand buys the Perera house at a foreclosure auction

    Actress and singer Barbra Streisand purchases 49 East 80th Street at a foreclosure auction in January 1970 for $420,000, after the mansion passed from the Perera family through Goldman Sachs heir Walter E. Sachs to his ex-wife, Mary Williamson Sachs, who loses it to foreclosure. Streisand renovates the house and within months is already looking to lease it out rather than live there herself.

    Source: Wikipedia

  9. 2007

    The Perera house earns a National Register of Historic Places listing

    The National Register of Historic Places added the house at 49 East 80th Street in 2007. It has five stories plus a basement, eight bedrooms and five bathrooms across nearly 9,200 square feet. Real-estate magnate Michael T. Cohen had owned it since buying it for $4 million in 1980.

    “The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2007.”

    Source: Wikipedia

Further reading

Nearby

All 93 buildings with stories in Upper East Side