A unique and historically important Manhattan townhouse is back on the market this winter with a price cut. The Herbert N. Straus mansion, a magnificently ornate 28,000 sq. ft. residence on the Upper East Side, most recently appeared this summer, when it listed at $88 million as part of the estate of Jeffrey Epstein. It is now asking $65 million.

The Lenox Hill property’s history is far more expansive than its most recent ownership tenure. The story of the Straus mansion begins about a hundred years ago, when the property’s namesake—the heir of Macy’s department store—decided to build a be-all-and-end-all mansion ‘in town’ that would stand as a potently powerful personal statement…and also as a symbol of material value, both existential and pecuniary.

Straus commissioned architect Horace Trumbauer to design the residence, and the French Renaissance style—think pre-Sun King extravagance—was settled on as a suitable representational theme; opulent, but relatively understated. Fifteen foot-high double front doors are proportionally correct for a city dwelling that’s forty feet wide and reaches seven levels heavenward. A couple of Trumbauer’s other modest projects, by the way, include Arcadia University’s Grey Towers Castle, and mansion Whitemarsh Hall, also in Pennsylvania.

There are 40 rooms in the Straus haus. Some of the spaces are of French origin and, astonishingly, correct to the style’s era, having been dismantled in 1600s or 1700s mansions on the Continent and shipped to New York to star in the home…which was completed in 1944, about ten years after Straus died. Ah, well. A lifespan amounts to merely ironies accumulated.