After 20 years of fans, the owner of Carrie Bradshaw’s apartment has had enough
The steps of Carrie Bradshaw’s brownstone apartment have seen more couture than a Paris runway, but after more than 20 years, the owner of the building exterior featured in Sex and the City has had enough.
On Tuesday, the owner of the apartment on 66 West Perry Street in New York City’s West Village filed a landmark application to the city’s Landmarks Preservation Committee to install a stoop gate at the bottom of the brownstone steps.
The brownstone steps outside Carrie Bradshaw’s apartment on Sex and the City (left) and in real life.Credit: Getty Images
“After 20-plus years of hoping the fascination with my stoop would die away and fans would find a new object for their devotion, I have acknowledged we need something more substantial. In order to regain a reasonable quality of life for our tenants and ourselves: we need to install a proper gate,” the owner wrote. They bought the apartment in 1978.
The application was first uncovered by Emily Sundberg, a New York-based writer behind the Substack newsletter FeedMe.
The brownstone steps are one of several locations in the city frequented by fans of the show, including Magnolia Bakery and The Plaza Hotel. The interior scenes in Carrie’s apartment were filmed in a separate location.
In 2014, the owners of the West Perry Street building installed a chain with a “no trespassing” sign across the stairs, but they said this has not been enough to stop fans.
Drawings included in the application to install a gate. Credit: 1 of 7 Industrial Design, KDP Design
“Many visitors respect the chain. But many do not,” they wrote.
“They climb over the chain, pose, dance or lie down on the steps, climb to the top to stare in the Parlor windows, try to open the main entrance door, or, when drunk late at night, ring the doorbells. We’ve also had graffiti painted on the steps and initials carved into the main door frame.”
In the statement, the owner of the apartment admitted taking pity on the show’s location scout decades ago, who, they said, did not anticipate what the then-unknown series would become.
“I felt sorry for the young location scout who was a recent grad from NYU Film School,” the building owner wrote.
“He told me if he didn’t secure THIS house, he would lose his first real job in the business. 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.”
Tyson Bidner, now an executive producer on hit TV show The Bear, confirmed to Gothamist he was the young scout who secured the location.
The motion will be presented at a Landmarks Preservation Committee meeting on Wednesday.
The brownstone steps are not the first example of film and TV fans annoying owners. Just last week, the owners of Walter White’s house in Breaking Bad announced they were selling their home in New Mexico, saying its popularity among tourists had affected their quality of life.
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