Harold Pratt House
670 Park Avenue | also 58 East 68th Street | Upper East Side | built 1919
Open on the map5 entries
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.
- 1920
William Adams Delano of Delano & Aldrich designs a house for Harold and Harriet Pratt
The house is designed and built in 1920 for Harold Irving Pratt and his wife by William Adams Delano of Delano & Aldrich, an architectural firm sought out by the Rockefellers, Astors, Vanderbilts and Whitneys. Only the best materials are used, and the house reputedly cost more than $1 million at the time. Pratt was the youngest of Charles Pratt's eight children; his father merged Pratt Astral oil with Standard Oil of New Jersey.
Source: pratthouse.com
- 1920
Mrs. Pratt insists that the family drawing room be square, like a room she saw in Ireland
The room now called the Rockefeller Ballroom was the Pratt family's formal drawing room. Mrs. Pratt insisted that it be square, like a room she had seen in Ireland. It has pine paneling and chandeliers whose crystals are each unique.
Source: pratthouse.com
- 1920
Mrs. Pratt overrules her architect and gets hand-painted Venetian-style doors
Mrs. Pratt wants hand-painted Venetian-style doors for the entrances to the library and the drawing room, though architect William Adams Delano demurs because they do not suit the house's English architecture. She gets her way: the doors still stand at the entrances to the Rockefeller Ballroom and the Rubin Library.
Source: pratthouse.com
- 1945
The Council on Foreign Relations moves into the Pratt House after Harriet Pratt's donation
Oil industrialist Harold I. Pratt and his family had the mansion built in 1919-1920 as their home. His widow, Harriet Barnes Pratt, donated it in 1944, and the Council on Foreign Relations took up residence in April 1945; the think tank's headquarters is still there.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1962
The Council on Foreign Relations brings Air Force officers to the Pratt House to study with its scholars
In 1962 the Council on Foreign Relations began a program under which chosen Air Force officers came to the Pratt House to study with its scholars. The Army, Navy and Marine Corps then requested comparable programs for their own officers.
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- Harold Pratt HouseWikipedia
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