My first apartment (or I should say the tiny loft space inside a writer’s apartment) in NYC was in the West Village. Maybe it’s because of that, I have always been really, really fond of the neighborhood. Also, who am I kidding? it is only the most charming and quaint neighborhood in all of the city with townhomes built in the 1800s and cobblestoned streets that are not numbered but, you know, have real street names.

Although I don’t live here anymore, I still find myself yearning for West Village’s off-the-grid layout, charming little restaurants and shops, and, most of all, the brownstones. Grove Court is one of only a handful private courts scattered throughout NYC that features a row fo six lovely red-bricked brownstones. There is a foreboding gate that prevents tourists and locals alike from actually stepping foot onto the property, but you can peer between the bars of the gate for a view, which is what I did when I took this photo.

An interesting tidbit about Grove Court: it was built by grocery store owner Samuel Cocks between 1853 and 1854 and was not, at the time, a coveted place to live. The houses were small and, perhaps more importantly, did not feature any stoops (see why they were important here). Its residents back then were mostly poor tradesmen and laborers, who Cocks thought he could lure to the grocery store around the corner.

It’s kind of funny how a place that was basically a row of backhouses for the poor now has one of the most prestigious addresses in all of Manhattan. It goes to show that the actual value of a place/thing is not absolute; it only holds whatever value we impart to it. I see this all the time with the inevitable and unfortunate development of previously “sketchy” neighborhoods like the Lower East Side and Harlem.