Stuyvesant Square Park from “Sex and the City”

At the risk of this blog becoming solely Sex and the City-based, here I am yet again with yet another locale from the hit HBO series.  For those of you non-SATC fans out there, don’t worry, I will be chronicling NYC sites from other productions soon.  I will also be interspersing New York spots with ones in L.A., as well, to break up any sort of location monotony.  For today, though, it’s all about SATC and SJP.  I bring you Stuyvesant Square Park, a spot I have long wanted to stalk thanks to its appearance in the Season 5 episode of Sex and the City titled “Plus One Is the Loneliest Number.”

In the episode, which originally aired in 2002, Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) meets a cute author named Jack Berger (Ron Livingston) while at her publisher’s office on the eve of the release of her first book.  Her publisher suggests that Berger take Carrie under his wing and share with her the ins and outs of the book world.  So the two head out to a park to chat, McDonald’s sack lunches in hand.  I loved absolutely everything about the scene – Carrie and Berger’s chemistry and easy banter, the picturesque park surroundings, the McDonald’s meals (I’d take McDonald’s over a fancy restaurant any day!), and (especially) Carrie’s dress, shoes and hair.  So I, of course, became obsessed with tracking down where filming took place.

The endeavor turned out to be pretty easy thanks to a sign reading “Stuyvesant Square” that was visible in the background of the scene.

In the episode, Carrie and Berger were sitting in the southwest corner of Stuyvesant Square Park, near the intersection of East 15th Street and Rutherford Place, in the general vicinity of the area pictured below.

After finishing their lunches, the two then exit the park through the gate located at East 16th Street and Rutherford Place . . .

. . . and proceed to walk south down Rutherford.  It is there that Berger drops the bomb on Carrie that he has a live-in girlfriend.

Stuyvesant Square Park, also known simply as Stuyvesant Square, turned out to be quite the picturesque stalk!  The serene site, which is bisected by 2nd Avenue, is comprised of shaded benches, sparkling fountains and meandering pathways, surrounded by a bevy of handsome and historic New York buildings.  All that greenery and brick make for some glorious scenery!

The park has quite an interesting history.  The tract was originally part of an 120-acre farm owned by Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch Director-General of the New Netherland colony.  In 1836, Peter’s great-great-grandson, Peter Gerard Stuyvesant, sold a 4-acre parcel of the farm to the City of New York for $5 with the intention that it be used as a public park.

The land sat untouched for several years, though, causing Stuyvesant to file a lawsuit against the city to force development in 1839.  It still took quite a while, until 1847 in fact, for landscaping of the site to begin and Stuyvesant Square Park finally opened to the public in 1850.

In 1847, during the development process, a large cast iron fence was installed around the perimeter of the park.  Amazingly, it still stands today and has the distinction of being New York’s oldest cast iron fence.

In the 1930s, Stuyvesant Square Park was renovated by landscape architect Gilmore David Clark.  Though it was rehabbed once again in 1982 and is currently undergoing some restorations, the space looks much the same today as it did when Clark completed work on it in 1937.

Sex and the City is hardly the only production to have made use of the park’s beauty.

April Wheeler (Kate Winslet) – wearing an amazing white dress – walks by Stuyvesant Square Park after picking up travel documents in the 2008 drama Revolutionary Road.  The brief segment was shot on Rutherford Place, just north of East 15th Street.

It was at the park that Patty Hewes (Glenn Close) met with Patrick Scully (Jeff Binder) in the Season 5 episode of Damages titled “But You Don’t Do That Anymore,” which aired in 2012.  (I cannot get over how different the park looks during the winter when there are no leaves on the trees!)

A large portion of White Collar’s Season 5 storyline centered around a priceless stained glass window located at a church across the street from Stuyvesant Square Park.  As such, the park popped in a couple of episodes, most notably in 2013’s “No Good Deed,” in which Neal Caffrey (Matt Bomer) and Mozzie (Willie Garson) masqueraded as repairmen in order to steal the window.

Stuyvesant Square Park was also where John Reese (Jim Caviezel) took a cell phone call from Lionel Fusco (Kevin Chapman) and discussed the fact that all hell was breaking loose in the city in the Season 4 episode of Person of Interest titled “The Cold War,” which aired in 2014.

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Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Stuyvesant Square Park, from the “Plus One Is the Loneliest Number” episode of Sex and the City, is located at 2nd Avenue and East 15th Street in the Gramercy Park neighborhood of New York.

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