Former UES Home Of Eleanor Roosevelt Hits Sales Market

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — An Upper East Side townhouse where Eleanor Roosevelt lived out her last days has hit the market asking $20 million, according to reports.

Roosevelt lived in 55 E. 74th St. — a 5-story home located between Madison and Park avenues — between 1959 and 1962, the Wall Street Journal first reported. When the nation's longest-serving first lady lived in the building she occupied the bottom floors while close friends Edna and David Gurewitsch took the top-floor unit, according to the report.

Roosevelt and the Gurewitsch couple bought the home in 1959 and held it until 1999 when it was bought by Meera Gandhi and ex husband Vikram Gandhi and converted into a single-family home, according to public real estate records. Meera Ghandi is putting the home on the market because she is downsizing now that her children are grown, the Wall Street Journal reported.

While Roosevelt lived in the home the former first lady hosted esteemed guests such as President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, the Wall Street Journal reported. A collection of Roosevelt memorabilia owned by Ghandi will be handed over to the home's new owner, according to the report.

The 19th-century home is a landmark and part of the Upper East Side Historic District, according to Landmarks Preservation Commission records from 1982. The six-bedroom home is one of eight limestone townhouses built by noted architects Buchman & Deisler, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Roosevelt served as first lady to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt from 1933 to 1945. A native New Yorker, Roosevelt was born in 1884 and died in 1962. Roosevelt revolutionized the role of first lady, often making appearances and giving speeches in the place of her husband, who suffered a paralytic illness that affected him from the waist down.

Read the full Wall Street Journal report here.

Photo by Keystone/Hulton Archive/ Getty Images