New York City’s got a lot of famous architecture — the Empire State Building, Central Park, Madison Square Garden — the list is long and storied, but these landmarks are only a small sample of the city’s greatest spots. From hidden speakeasies to mysterious islands, New York’s filled with secrets, and we’re going to take advantage of the summer weather to explore as many of them as we can, starting with the Pomander Walk.
This cooperative apartment complex might not stand out in, say, Tudor London, but the whimsical architecture and modest cottage-feel of the houses are wildly out of place in Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Spanning 94th and 95th Streets between Broadway and West End Avenue, the narrow passageway between the two rows is ringed by towering brick apartment complexes, and hemmed in by passing taxicabs.
Built in 1922, Pomander Walk comprises 16 Tudor-style homes, each of them with two stories and delightfully bright flowers peeking out of windowboxes. They’re split eight to a row and display stucco, brick and half-timber designs. The inspiration for the unusual street was an eponymously named English play that was set in “a retired crescent of five very small, old-fashioned houses near Chiswick [London]”; when Thomas Healy bought the block in 1920, he had the houses designed as if they were the set of the play. Healy had plans to eventually raze the Pomander Walk to make room for a grand hotel, but he died before the plans were complete, and the little cluster of European-style houses remained.
This little gem is tucked away uptown, but, surrounded on all sides by high-rises, it’s worth a visit for a breath of architectural fresh air.
