Inside the building Anna Delvey could never have: New York’s mysterious 281 Park Avenue was featured in Netflix’s Inventing Anna and ruined the fake heiress, but what’s it really like?
- The new TV show Inventing Anna is produced by Bridgerton’s Shonda Rhimes and is based on a true story about a fake German heiress who might now get deported from the US
- Delvey wanted the property for her Anna Delvey Foundation, but it is owned by RFR Realty co-founder Aby Rosen and is now home to Fotografiska New York
If you’ve watched or heard about the glamorous misadventures of Delvey, then you are likely familiar with her ambitious project called the Anna Delvey Foundation or ADF. She envisioned the private members’ club and “dynamic visual arts” foundation to be housed in a historic building at 281 Park Avenue South.
Falsifying financial documents and cashing bad cheques, Delvey got caught in 2017, before she had even turned her vision into reality. While she was released from incarceration in 2021, she is now detained by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement for overstaying her visa. But what has happened to the iconic property that she will never have?
281 Park Avenue South is a real building
First things first, 281 Park Avenue does indeed exist. Sorokin came up with an 80-page pitch outlining her larger-than-life plans for the Anna Delvey Foundation and chose the ornate building that sits on the corner of Park Avenue South and East 22nd Street in New York.
Inventing Anna showed its exterior quite a few times, with the fraudster even touring the inside with a high-profile group including a real estate broker, a famous architect and a well-known restaurateur.
How big is this New York landmark?
