Pomander Walk is a hidden row of townhouses and apartments in Manhattan resembling an old European village. It was a 1920's idealized attempt to create a storybook, secret life in the middle of the city.
It's so hidden that you wouldn't know it was there unless you spotted the signs. From 94th Street it looks like this...
and the other entrance from 95th Street looks like this...
without a lot of hint that between the two it looks like this:
There are 27 units in this "village" -- 16 of them facing the private walkway. They don't come on the market very often, so when they do, people discover the charm of Pomander Walk all over again.
The listing doesn't show us the outside of the unit for sale, but since it has this view...
I'm betting it's this one...
It's a 600 square feet downstairs apartment in the brown russet brick building in the middle of the block.
Here's its floor plan:
Sixteen of the units were built like this one, while the remaining eleven were larger, with three bedrooms.
.The living room has built-in shelving around the two front windows.
It's been staged to look like it could be a nice apartment no matter where it was.
If it were mine, I would make it look like it was in the middle of a European village in New York, like this:
And I would take that design right down this hallway...
like this...
to the kitchen, which could definitely use more personality:
Inspired by the shutters across the street, I photoshopped it into this:
Since this place is small, I'm going to keep on decorating it. This bedroom...
could look like this:
The second bedroom has been staged two different ways, to show us how it could be a bedroom or a home office.
Let's make it a home office, like this:
Except that I forgot one thing...
I had to include a book on those shelves, the book that inspired this village, Pomander Walk.
When it was staged as a romantic comedic play on Broadway in 1910, it gave nightclub owner Thomas Healy an idea. He built his version of it between 1920-1922 with architects King and Campbell. Interestingly, I found out very little about them besides their connection to Pomander Walk.
{Pomander Walk staged in Carmel, CA, 1921, source}
Just like the set for the play, Healy intended for the houses to be temporary. "It is an interesting feature of the design of the Walk that all the inner buildings are constructed of more fragile materials whereas the outer buildings are faced in large parts with the relatively sturdier brick and stone." source
Healy really wanted to build a large hotel on the property, so he figured he would use rental income to generate enough capital to build the hotel. He died in 1927 before he could make that possible.
Appropriately for a set, it has housed many stage actors over the years, including Rosalind Russell.
It's also been used as a film location. In the Woody Allen movie Hannah and Her Sisters, architect David (Sam Waterston) gives a tour of it, even though the gates are locked to non-residents.
They must have changed the gardens for the movie, because they normally are as fanciful as the houses.
In many Pomander Walk reminds me of a cake -- embellished heavily on the outside but a little plain on the inside, and meant to be appreciated for a short time by a limited number of people. Also like Pomander Walk, cakes can be a pretty awesome surprise treat.
The listing is
here. The NYC landmark's document is
here.
This week's Youtube video, Decorating a Vintage Minnesota Lakeside Cabin, is
here.
