Fireplace inspired from the designs of Giulano da Sangallo to be sold in New York

Antique Furniture

Bonhams will offer the Thaw fireplace on April 24 in the April 24-25 Fine Furniture, Silver, Decorative Arts & Clocks auction (est. $25,000-35,000). A true gem from the fabled mansions of Pittsburgh's titans of industry, the fireplace would have been a gathering spot for America's most prominent citizens.

When Benjamin Thaw, son of Pittsburgh's Thaw family patriarch and railroad tycoon William Thaw, decided to build his Steel City mansion in 1899 he felt his parlor needed a centerpiece befitting a member of one of America's most prominent families - and so he settled on the monumental fireplace from the Palazzo Gondi in Florence.

Unfortunately for Thaw, the Gondi family declined to part with their extraordinary hearth. However they did allow Thaw's Italian agents to sketch the masterpiece designed by Giulano da Sangallo, which was then reproduced in Italy and shipped to Pittsburgh for the enormous sum of $15,000 - over thirty times the average annual salary of the day.

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