St. Luke's Place

St. Luke's Place Review

Steeped in New York City history and shaded by graceful gingko trees, this somewhat hard-to find section of Leroy Street has 15 classic Italianate brownstone and brick town houses (1851-54). Novelist Theodore Dreiser wrote An American Tragedy at No. 16, and poet Marianne Moore resided at No. 14. (Robert De Niro later lived here for decades—in mid-2012 he sold it for $9.5 million.) The colorful (and corrupt) Mayor Jimmy Walker (first elected in 1926) lived at No. 6; the lampposts in front are "mayor's lamps," which were sometimes placed in front of the residences of New York mayors. This block is often used as a film location: No. 12 was shown as the Huxtables' home on The Cosby Show (although on the show it was in Brooklyn), and No. 4 was the setting of the Audrey Hepburn thriller Wait Until Dark. Before 1890 the James J. Walker Park, on the south side of the street near Hudson, was a graveyard where, according to legend, the dauphin of France—the lost son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette—is buried.