| Payne Whitney House | |
|---|---|
 The house as seen in 2010 | |
 | |
| General information | |
| Architectural style | High Italian Renaissance |
| Location | 972 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan, New York, US |
| Coordinates | 40°46′35.5″N 73°57′49″W / 40.776528°N 73.96361°W |
| Construction started | 1902 |
| Completed | 1909 |
| Client | William Payne Whitney |
| Owner | Government of France |
| Technical details | |
| Floor count | 5 (plus 2 basements) |
| Design and construction | |
| Architect(s) | Stanford White of McKim, Mead & White |
| Designated | September 15, 1970[1] |
| Reference no. | 0737[1] |
The Payne Whitney House is a historic building at 972 Fifth Avenue, south of 79th Street, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It was designed in the High Italian Renaissance style by architect Stanford White of the firm McKim, Mead & White. Completed in 1909 as a private residence for businessman William Payne Whitney and his family, the building has housed the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States since 1952.
The house has a five-story-tall gray-granite facade that is curved slightly outward. Each story is horizontally separated by an entablature. The interiors of the Payne Whitney mansion were designed in 16th- and 17th-century Renaissance styles. The first floor includes a rotunda that was decorated with an artwork attributed to Michelangelo, as well as the Venetian Room, a reception room that William Payne Whitney's wife Helen Hay Whitney particularly valued. Since 2014, the second and third stories have housed a French-language bookstore, Albertine Books.
The Whitney house was commissioned in 1902 by William's uncle Colonel Oliver Hazard Payne as a wedding gift. Construction took so long that, in the meantime, the couple's two children John (Jock) and Joan were born and Stanford White was killed. After the house's completion, William and Helen lived there until their respective deaths in 1927 and 1944. Jock Whitney sold the house in 1948 to a developer who converted it into apartments. The French government bought the building four years later. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated 972 Fifth Avenue as an official landmark in 1970. Various renovations have been conducted at the house over the years, including in the 1990s and 2010s.