Nick Churton of the Halstead Real Estate London office discovers a rare gem of a building in New York that stands comparison with the very best in the premier European capitals.

When does a home become beaux arts? It would have to be very beautiful. It perhaps should hang next to another beauty. It should ooze class and provenance from every pore. Its maker should be celebrated. It should be desired by the many but sadly only affordable by the few. It should be a palace, or a mansion at least. Its setting should be in one of the finest positions man has made possible for a home to be set. It should be rarer than rare and almost impossible to possess.

Typically such a property only comes available once in a lifetime or even several lifetimes. With 11 East 70^th Street, New York, that time is now. Next door to one of the most highly regarded art collections in the world, Number 11 is a Charles I Berg mansion that abuts the Frick Museum and is within hailing distance of Central Park.

Berg was originally from Philadelphia and certainly knew a thing or two about beaux arts. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris from 1877 to 1879. He could not have timed his entry into the New York architectural scene better, as back then the city was the cultural and moneyed hub of the Gilded Age.

Number 11 reflects the grandeur of that time but curiously manages to stay relevant to our current age. That is what good architecture does; it defies time, fashion and taste. As they say, form is temporary but class is permanent.

Who would choose to live at this address? There will be only a few with the means - and the reason to. One reason could be to house an important private art collection or to deal in fine art – the building would make a fabulous gallery.

Another could be to make a unique home in one of the grandest and most iconic neighbourhoods in the world.

Or it might be an amalgam of both – or something else entirely.

But whatever the reason, this extraordinary 6,594 sq. ft. building offers something few others do - timeless style and unabashed prestige on a global scale.

To see full details of this amazing property click here.