The city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) on Tuesday approved an application to install a gate at the foot of a townhouse in the Greenwich Village Historic District. Not just any home, the property, located at 66 Perry Street, appeared as Carrie Bradshaw’s apartment on the HBO show “Sex and the City.” Despite being off the air for 20 years, the show’s popularity continues today, leading tourists and TikTokers to visit the front stoop at all hours and film themselves on the famous steps. When a chain and a “no trespassing” sign at the base of the stoop failed to stop the mayhem, the brownstone’s owner, Barbara Lorber, asked the LPC to approve a new gate for the landmarked property and commissioners agreed.
Lorber has owned the property since 1978 and renovated the home in the 1980s to restore the 19th-century building’s original stoop. According to Lorber, a talent scout, “a recent grad from NYU Film School,” asked to use her home in Sex and The City, which debuted in 1998.
“At the time, no one knew the show would turn into anything long-lasting…much less the iconic fantasy vehicle and touchstone for NYC’s magic that it has become,” she wrote in a prepared presentation to the LPC first spotted by Emily Sundberg’s Substack newsletter FeedMe.
Years ago, Lorber installed the chain and “private property” sign at the base of the stoop, which helps, but does not stop all visitors. Fans of the show, she said, have climbed over it, danced, laid down on the steps, tried to open the main door, and rang the doorbells.
“I assume that if any of you looked at your phone, the newspaper, the television, anywhere, today, you understand the extent of the endless presence of interest in my celebrity staircase,” Lorber testified on Tuesday.
Lorber nearly started crying as she spoke to the commission. “That house shouldn’t be gated. What was beautiful in the late 19th century is unfortunately in need of more protection in our century, in our time,” she said.
“I’d hope for decades that this would pass. But at this point, I think, even someone as stubborn as I am, this isn’t going away in the near future.”
Architect Isidoro Cruz presented the designs for the stoop gate, which will match the details, materials, and finish of the existing iron railings and fence. The commissioners were split over the arch design and height of the gate but voted unanimously to approve the application with plans to work with Cruz on a more simplified design.
Preservationist groups often oppose gates proposed for landmarked properties, since stoops were originally intended as semi-public spaces to be shared. But both Village Preservation and the Victorian Society New York expressed sympathy for the owner and testified in favor of the gate’s design.
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