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What: Pomander Walk is a
village-in-a-city, a tiny pedestrian-only street of tiny houses running from
94th to 95th Street between Broadway and West End Avenue. Although apparently
built as a temporary improvement, landmark designation in 1982 has kept it
permanent. It is named for the
play ''Pomander Walk'' -- a romantic comedy set on a small street in Georgian
London – which opened in New York in 1910.
Who: The popularity of
“Pomander Walk” crested just when Thomas J. Healy was at the height of his fame
as a nightclub operator. Born in
Ireland, Healy arrived in the United States as a boy and accumulated a string
of cafes and catering operations.
He acquired a 200-year leasehold on the property and hired the
architectural firm of King & Campbell to create a mews based on the set of
the popular play.
When: Healy
filed plans for Pomander Walk in 1921 and announced plans to build a large
hotel on the site shortly thereafter. The diminutive size of the buildings and
Healy's announced plans for the hotel indicate that he considered the Walk an
interim improvement. But the hotel
was never built and Pomander Walk acquired Landmark status in 1982.
Where: King & Campbell designed a row
of two-story Tudor-style residences with varying facades of brick, stucco and
mock half-timbering. These carried over the scale but not the exact style of
the original play's stage set.
Twenty two-story houses facing one another across a walkway run from West
94th to West 95th Streets, along with seven houses fronting only on 94th and
95th Streets.
Why: ''You have no idea
the number of people who walk by and stop at the gate and say, 'You mean people
actually live here?' '' – Resident Stan Clickstein
Info via The New York
Times. Images: urt.parsons.edu
(1), daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com (2,3), bitingthebigapple.blogspot.com (4),
forbes.com (5).
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