Hidden streets of New York: Grove Court

Dusting off the bookshelf, you might come across a dog-eared copy of O. Henry’s short stories. In it you’re bound to find “The Last Leaf,” a charming story about a lovely young woman who is lying in her sickbed waiting out the days until the last leaf on the vine outside her window falls to the ground.  A dashing artist, who has been courting her, wards off the tragedy by painting a leaf on the wall as she sleeps.  When the leaf and the stem stubbornly refuse to leave the vine, the heroine regains her health, the hero proposes marriage, and the couple live happily ever after.

The story goes that O. Henry, who lived in the neighborhood, got the idea for this romantic tale from a visit he made to Grove Court, six small three-story houses slumbering behind an antique iron gate in a remote section of Greenwich Village.  These barn-red dwellings, set off by chalk-white shutters, were built over the stone basements of what were two seventeenth-century Dutch farmhouses.

Looking through the gate today from a bend between 10 and 12 Grove Street, you discover a tree-shaded, ivy-covered courtyard paved with moss-covered bricks that ripple like waves. At one time this private pedestrian-only plot of land was called Pig’s Alley. At another more boisterous time it was known as Mixed Ale Alley. Now everyone calls it Grove Court, and you won’t find a more peaceful enclave in all New York. Some citizens says that this parcel of early Dutch real estate remains the quietest residential area in Manhattan and one with a whisper of graciousness.

The houses, which look as though they were taken down brick by brick and brought over by barge from Bruges, Belgium, are now all owner occupied. At one point in time, sculptors Alan and Robert Robbins, who had lived in the court since their childhood, remembered when the old Ninth Avenue El, with its Swiss chalet-like stationhouse and windows glowing with blue and red Bohemian glass, was within walking distance. Other residents have included a descendant of once of the founders of the New York Stock Exchange and congenial group of photographers, writers and artists.

In 1952, the antique bricks and native stones of Grove Court were almost swept away to make room for an asphalt-topped playground. But thanks to the people who fought to preserve it, this last vestige of old New York will go on gathering moss for many years to come.