D AV I D PAT R I C K C O L U M B I A museum. There is so much to see, so much to look at— so much wonder. As I do every time I visit the Met, I was chastising myself for not going more often—only a mile and a half down the same 83rd Street from my apartment. Exiting the Met from the top of the steps I took a picture of the Benjamin Duke House on the corner of East 82nd Street facing the museum steps. The mansion was built between 1899 and 1901 as a spec house for one family—eight stories high and 20,000 square feet. It was designed in the Beaux Arts style. The interior was French Renaissance, and it
was decorated mainly with Louis XV–style furniture. Duke’s brother, James B. Duke, father of Doris Duke, bought the house six years later in 1907 and lived there until his own mansion at 1 East 78th Street was ready for occupancy in 1912. After James moved out, Angier Buchanan Duke, son of Benjamin, moved in until 1919 when his sister, Mary Duke, married Anthony J. Drexel Biddle, Jr., and they moved in. Different members of the Duke family owned the house for more than a century—until 2006, when it was sold for $40 million to Tamir Sapir, who sold it four
years later to Carlos Slim, the Mexican billionaire. Slim paid $44 million. Five years later he put it on the market for $80 million. Both Duke houses are New York City Landmarks, thankfully, and will remain standing with their original exteriors. Meanwhile, across the sea, over in France, on that Tuesday Prince Amyn Aga Khan (Amyn to his many friends) celebrated his 80th birthday at a party for 600 guests, many from the United States. He is the younger brother (by a year) of Karim, the Aga Khan IV, and a half-brother of our Princess Yasmin Aga Khan (Yazzie to all her friends), the daughter
of Rita Hayworth and Aly Khan, father of the brothers. Among those attending were the Aga Khan, Princess Zahrea Aga Khan, as well as a number of Americans, including Lynn Wyatt, Judy Auchincloss, Alexis Gregory, Steve Berkowitz, Carolyne Roehm and Simon Pinniger, Christopher Walling, Renata Adler, Kip Forbes, Ashton Hawkins, Carolle Thibaut-Pomerantz, John Scharffenberger, Ira von Furstenberg, Micky Wolfson, Yanna Avis, Edward Cabot, Brad Geist and Catherine Warren, Maria Snyder, Princess Maria Pia de Savoie, as well a wide contingent from the Continent and the
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