Pomander Walk is a micro-neighborhood in the Borough of Manhattan

Manhattan

Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

 in the City of New York, located on the Upper West Side

Upper West Side

The Upper West Side is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, New York City, that lies between Central Park and the Hudson River and between West 59th Street and West 125th Street...

 between Broadway (New York) and West End Avenue

West End Avenue

West End Avenue is a north-south thoroughfare on the West Side of the borough of Manhattan in New York City, not far from the Hudson River.West End Avenue originates at West 59th Street; the continuation of the street below 59th Street is called Eleventh Avenue. It runs from 59th Street to its...

. Pomander Walk is a cooperative apartment complex consisting of twenty-seven buildings, attached in seven groups. The "Walk" itself, consisting of two rows of eight buildings flanking a narrow courtyard with a concrete sidewalk down the center, runs through the middle of the block between 94th Street and 95th Street

95th Street (Manhattan)

95th Street runs from Riverside Drive, overlooking the Hudson River, to the East River, through the New York City borough of Manhattan. It traverses the neighborhoods of Upper West Side, Upper East Side, Carnegie Hill, and Yorkville; the street is interrupted by Central Park.-Notable buildings:*...

, with a gate at each end. Four buildings face 94th St., and another seven face 95th St., including one with a return facade on West End Ave. Each building originally had one flat on each floor. In recent years, some buildings have been reconfigured to serve as single-family homes.

Pomander Walk was built in 1921 by nightclub impresario Thomas J. Healy who planned to build a major hotel on the site. According to city historian Christopher Gray

Christopher Gray

Christopher Gray is an American journalist and architectural historian noted for his weekly New York Times column "Streetscapes", about the history of New York architecture, real estate and public improvements...

, when Healy was unable to get financing for a hotel, he built the houses that stand on the site today, apparently to provide a temporary cash-flow while he waited to raze them and build a hotel. It was designed by the New York architecture firm King and Campbell.

In 2009 the owners completed a four-year facade renovation, restoring architectural details that had been lost for decades. In 2008 Landmark West! bestowed their Building Rehabilitation Award on Pomander Walk.

The complex is named for Pomander Walk, a romantic comedy by Louis N. Parker that opened in New York in 1910. The play is set on an imaginary byway near London. The place as built bears scant resemblance to the setting described in the play as "a retired crescent of five very small, old-fashioned houses near Chiswick, on the river-bank. ... They are exactly alike: miniature copies of Queen Anne mansions". New York City's Pomander Walk is Tudoresque, a style that enjoyed a vogue in America in the years following World War I.

Past residents, whose addresses can be documented by telephone directories, include Nancy Carroll, Ward Morehouse, Herbert Stothart, Paulette Goddard and Rosalind Russell.

Pomander Walk is startlingly different in style and out of scale with the tall buildings that surround it; author and former resident Darryl Pinckney

Darryl Pinckney

Darryl Pinckney is an American novelist, playwright, and essayist. He grew up in a middle class African-American family in the midwest and was educated at Columbia University. He is a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books, Granta, Slate, and The Nation...

called it "an insertion of incredible whimsy" into the Upper West Side.

Pomander Walk became a New York City Landmark in 1982.