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Streetscapes/Pomander Walk, on the Upper West Side; A Tiny Street Where Interim Became Permanent

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January 16, 2000, Section 11, Page 9Buy Reprints
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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, and the little enclave is now weathering changes wrought by a new high-rise neighbor.

The play ''Pomander Walk'' -- a romantic comedy set on a small street in Georgian London -- opened in New York in 1910, 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.

In 1920 Healy acquired a 200-year leasehold on a steep, irregular property at the northwest corner of 94th and Broadway, running through to the southeast corner of 95th and West End Avenue.

While he ultimately planned a 16-story hotel, he first built a nondescript three-story commercial building on the Broadway corner, designed by George Dugan. Then in 1921 he filed plans for Pomander Walk: 20 two-story houses facing one another across a walkway running from 94th to 95th Streets, along with seven houses fronting only on 94th and 95th Streets. The diminutive size of the buildings and Healy's announced plans for the hotel indicate that he considered the Walk an interim improvement.

Healy hired the architectural firm of King & Campbell, which 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.

Most of the buildings have two simplex apartments, one up, one down, each with two bedrooms. The ground-floor apartment at 10 Pomander Walk originally had two bedrooms -- 10 by 13 feet and 9 by 10 feet -- one bathroom and an 8- by 10-foot dining area off a 10- by 16-foot living room. Its kitchenette was in a walk-in closet.

In September 1921 The New York Times said that half the apartments were rented, even though the project was not quite finished. ''The effect obtained,'' said an article in the magazine Architecture & Building in 1922, ''is as though a portion of the olden times was transported to the heart of the modern world.''

The 1925 census records small households, like Sophie Seringhaus, 43, a teacher at DeWitt Clinton High School, who lived at 10 Pomander Walk with her daughter, Else, 9. There is a tradition that Healy particularly sought out theater people, and some of the earliest residents were in the entertainment industry -- among them, William Parke, a movie director; Herbert Stoddard, a playwright, and Ward Morehouse, drama critic for The New York Sun. But there were also lawyers, three bank examiners, secretaries, and, in the other apartment at 10 Pomander Walk, Vernon Pope, a salesman for a molding company.

BY 1930 none of those listed in the 1925 census were still there; they had been succeeded by two librarians, a stenographer, a lawyer and people with similar occupations - but no identifiable theater people. And of the 1930 tenants, only a third were still there three years later.

Healy never had a chance to demolish his own creation; he died in 1927, leaving an estate The New York Times estimated at $3 million. By the 1970's Pomander Walk had a rundown feel, but the enclave was designated a Landmark in 1982 and converted to a co-op soon after.

By that time real estate investors were jockeying over the Broadway frontage, which includes the Symphony Space theater, held as a single parcel with Pomander Walk. But the landmark designation took Pomander Walk out of play.

Now a new 21-story apartment house is rising on Broadway - replacing the old Thalia Theater and built directly above the Symphony Space theater. The village-like street of Pomander Walk rings with the noise of new construction, and of renovation on other surrounding high-rise structures.

Although the seven houses facing 94th and 95th Streets still have their older brown, slightly dingy cast, the houses on the walkway look trim and neat, painted in bright blues, reds and greens. Even in a mid-winter slump, the front-yard plantings look good.

But the Pomander Walk residents have been concerned that the shade cast by the new building to the east will affect the west side of garden plots, which up until recently got good morning light.

Stan Clickstein, the co-op president, lives in the ground-floor apartment of 10 Pomander Walk. A prior owner converted one of the rear bedrooms into a big kitchen, which, with its window, is lavish for one-bedroom apartments. Mr. Clickstein, a semi-retired woodworker, says he moved up from Chelsea five years ago. ''You have no idea the number of people who walk by and stop at the gate and say, 'You mean people actually live here?' '' he says.

Earlier this year the co-op applied to the Landmarks Preservation Commission to replace the asphalt shingles on the picturesque roofs of houses facing the walk with slate. ''We wanted something that would increase the distinctive character,'' he says.

But the slate would have cost $25,000 more than asphalt shingles so the co-op decided to use the less expensive material, at a cost of about $43,000. Period photographs suggest that the original shingles were asphalt.

Pomander Walk is a network of peculiarities. The western houses have exterior dumbwaiters -- perhaps for ice or garbage -- reached by a rear catwalk that partly projects out over the rear yards of the apartment houses on West End Avenue. And Mr. Clickstein says a right of way for the buildings on the east side, through the old Broadway commercial structures, is being rebuilt inside the new apartment building.

The most recent sale of an apartment, he says, was last summer, for $275,000, adding that several of the two-unit buildings have been combined into single houses. The co-op's next project is to replace many of the front doors, and then next year the individual shareholders, who control the gardens in front of their respective houses, will start replanting some of the gardens.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section 11, Page 9 of the National edition with the headline: Streetscapes/Pomander Walk, on the Upper West Side; A Tiny Street Where Interim Became Permanent. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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