Manhattan's Hidden Village

Heavy gates, Tudor homes and a fraternal spirit make a private nook on the Upper West Side feel downright colonial.

Photos by Emon Hassan

Bram Lewis stands with his hands sunken deep into his pockets, just outside the wrought iron gates of this unusually sequestered patch of the Upper West Side. He smiles and unlocks the small gate that leads into Pomander Walk, a slice of one of the city’s most heralded neighborhoods that most New Yorkers will never see.

The Walk, as locals call it, is a small English-style mew modeled after the streets of London and named for a romantic comedy by British playwright Louis N. Parker, set on a similar mew. It’s an anomaly for the Upper West Side, or anywhere, really–sixteen Tudor homes wedged into the middle of one city block that stretches from West 94th to 95th Street and Broadway to West End Avenue. Two rows of houses run north to south smack in the middle of the block, facing one other from either side of a car-free walkway. Painted in bright reds, greens and blues with decorative window shutters and miniature gardens, they resemble the cottages of a quaint, sleep…