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Grove Street Surprise

12/03/2008

I love being surprised by the city. Living in New York, you somehow adopt a jaded attitude that you’ve seen it all, which makes it even better when something unexpected comes along.

As I was going down Grove St today, I passed a bus load of tourists gawking at the apartment used in the sitcom Friends, located on the corner at Bedford Street. Nope, I’m too jaded to even look up. As I watched them snap thousands of pictures, I began thinking how much I like exploring the outer boroughs, because there’s just so much more of the unique and unexpected.

That’s when I saw something that surprised even me. What’s unusual about this picture?

See that break two houses from the right?

I’ve been down Grove Street a zillion times. I’ve filmed around the corner and held parking here. One of the offices frequently rented by NYC productions is a few blocks south. Yet I’ve never noticed Grove Court, neatly tucked away in the corner. You can’t even see it in Google Maps satellite view. It was built around 1850, a time when it was unthinkable to not have a home located directly on the street. Tradesmen and laborers were relegated to these dregs.

Of course, that’s all changed, and nowadays, this is an extremely exclusive property. But take a peek through the fence next time you’re going down Grove Street – it will impress even the most jaded New Yorker.

-SCOUT

Many more posts in the archives!

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Macmungo

10/03/2013

I came close to buying one of the Grove Court houses not long after I was married in 1971. Totally charming, but two drawbacks: too small, and my wife wanted someone (ie, doorman) between her and the street.

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Carmine

01/14/2015

I believe Grove Court is the setting for O. Henry’s short story “The Last Leaf.” Tours of Literary Greenwich Village include that stop and view from the gate on their maps, I think. (the short story Last Leaf is about the kid who is dying and stares as the leaves fall from a tree [a tree at the center of Grove Court, one assumes]—the kid imagines when the last leaf falls, she will die. i don’t remember if she does; trusting O Henry, there might have been a twist) Thanks for this blog; I have bookmarked it.

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1. Eved Young
  
  08/22/2015
  
  In the O’Henry story, an artist lives upstairs and is friends with the sick girl’s family. He couldn’t sell a single painting but when he realized that the leaves were dropping from the tree and the kid thought she’d die when the last one fell and went into a “medical crisis” she awoke the next morning, having beaten the fever and sees a single leaf still clinging to the wall outside her window she is on her way to a full recovery…then the reader flashes to a ladder and body in the snow, where the artist died after falling off the ladder when he completed painting the “final” leaf on the wall.
  
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