Fruit Streets: Cranberry and Willow Architectural Enclave

Why is it significant?

Turn onto the quiet, tree-shaded sidewalks of Cranberry Street and feel the frenetic energy of the metropolis instantly give way to nineteenth-century village tranquility.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Turn onto the quiet, tree-shaded sidewalks of Cranberry Street and feel the frenetic energy of the metropolis instantly give way to nineteenth-century village tranquility. Gaslight-style iron streetlamps cast soft shadows across immaculate red-brick Federal facades, Greek Revival porticos, and ornate cast-iron stoop railings entwined with English ivy. At the corner of Willow Street, handsome rowhouses built in the eighteen twenties and thirties feature Flemish-bond brickwork, delicate fanlight doorways, and recessed brownstone window lintels that have remained unaltered for almost two centuries.

The charming agrarian street names in this neighborhood—Cranberry, Orange, and Pineapple—were christened in the early nineteenth century by prominent landowner Lady Middagh. Local lore recounts that when city officials attempted to rename the streets after aristocratic New York families, Miss Middagh took offense at their vanity, walked out late at night with a ladder and bucket of paint, and defiantly restored her beloved fruit names until the municipal council capitulated. The neighborhood's unique architectural integrity was fiercely protected by generations of residents who resisted modernization, preserving pristine horse walk passages between carriage houses and retaining authentic bluestone curbing along the shaded sidewalks.

Look at number seventy Willow Street: this exquisite Federal townhouse was the private residence where author Truman Capote lived and worked for ten productive years in the nineteen fifties and sixties, drafting his masterpieces Breakfast at Tiffany's and In Cold Blood in the basement garden apartment.

Run your fingers over the hand-wrought iron boot scrapers affixed beside the parlor stoops: they served nineteenth-century residents returning home from muddy unpaved roads after riding the ferry from Manhattan. Strolling beneath the arching tree canopies in the twilight, one feels entirely removed from the clamor of the modern city.

Walk north along Hicks Street to the historic red-brick sanctuary of Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims.