Sale Of UES Irish Society Building To Be Reviewed By State AG

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — The state's top law-enforcement officer pledged this week to review the possible sale of the American Irish Historical Society's home on the Upper East Side, after a slew of prominent figures condemned the potential loss of the storied building.

The six-story, century-old mansion on Fifth Avenue near East 80th Street was listed for sale by the society earlier this year, at an asking price of $52 million.

The Gilded-Age townhouse, right across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has housed the society since 1940. Since then, it has hosted grand dinners and theater performances, welcomed presidents and mayors, and served as the longtime terminus of the city's St. Patrick's Day parade.

It is also home to an enormous, 10,000-volume library, whose prized tomes include the first Bible printed in the Irish language and letters written by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In January, though, the building was put on the market, much to the dismay of actor Liam Neeson, author Malachy McCourt, and a host of other Irish and Irish-American luminaries — not to mention the Irish government, whose foreign minister called it "a deeply disappointing development."

In New York, no nonprofit can sell property without it being approved by the state attorney general or supreme court. On Wednesday — St. Patrick's Day — Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement that she "take[s] recent concerns regarding the future of the building seriously."

"We are vigilantly monitoring the situation, and I want to reassure Irish communities here and abroad that any potential transaction would not move forward without consent from my office or consent from the courts," James said.

Her office has not gotten a formal request from the society to sell the building, she noted.

James's announcement came after the New York Times detailed longstanding dysfunction within the American Irish Historical Society under the decades-long reign of its president, Dr. Kevin Cahill, whose "nepotistic ways" have driven out longtime members, according to the Times.

The society did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, the listing by realtor Brown Harris Stevens proclaims that acquiring the building would be "like acquiring the Holy Grail."

"Simply put, this opportunity to acquire a building of this caliber directly on Fifth Avenue is one that may never occur again," it reads.