8. Consulate General of Cape Verde
The Consulate General of Cape Verde is housed in a townhouse on East 69th Street between Fifth and Madison Avenues. Formerly the Lucretia Lord Strauss House, the building is a neo-Tudor fantasy clad in ashlar fieldstone, with a beautifully crafted wood door and grouped, multi-paned windows on the upper levels. The main entrance and the service door also has a unique continuous square-headed drip molding. According to the AIA Guide to New York City, “English critic Osbert Lancaster might describe this as Stockbrokers’ Tudor. But neo-Gothic for the Cape Verde Islands.”
Back in 2000, controversy arose when Fernando Wahnon, the Ambassador of Cape Verde to the United Nations, claimed that the property cost one million dollars– “a good deal.” The statement provoked a lot of reactions from the media, especially after the Telegraph quoted its actual value to be $48 million. The controversy mainly questioned how a poor country like Cape Verde can own a property in one of the most upscale neighborhoods in an expensive city like New York.