Gatekeeping the ‘Sex and the City’ stoop

Carrie Bradshaw once said that “Beauty is fleeting, but a rent-controlled apartment overlooking the park is forever.”

Also forever, it would seem? The interest in the “Sex and the City” character’s stoop in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village historic district. (In the show, Bradshaw lives on the Upper East Side, but the exterior used for filming is actually farther south — that’s showbiz!)

Now, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission has granted the building’s owner, Barbara Lorber, permission to install a steel and iron gate at the foot of her brownstone stoop to prevent lookie-loos from climbing the stairs and bothering the building’s residents. Because the building is part of a historic district, she needed the commission’s approval for the gate, which will have a style in keeping with the facade of the rest of the building.

“That house shouldn’t be gated,” Lorber said in an emotional statement at a hearing Monday in front of the commission, adding, “I had hoped for literally decades that this would pass but at this point, I think even someone as stubborn as I am has to admit that this isn’t going away in the near future.”

What, exactly, do the residents of the famous brownstone face? The home is now a “global tourist destination,” Lorber wrote in the letter, first reported by the newsletter Feed Me. She added that day and night, she experienced visitors taking flash photos, talking loudly, posting to social media and “just celebrating the moment.” Some have added graffiti or carved their initials into the doorframe, she added.

Lorber has already installed a metal chain on the stoop with a sign that reads “Private Property — No Trespassing.” In her letter she notes that while the chain deters some visitors, others “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.”

When she agreed in the late 1990s to let a “young location scout” use the building’s exterior for “Sex and the City,” mostly because she felt sorry for him, “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,” she wrote. The show premiered in 1998 and, over the course of its six seasons, became a juggernaut for HBO, followed by two movies, a prequel and a sequel that is still on the air.

The residents at 66 Perry Street aren’t the only people who experience disturbances from overzealous fans. Many people who live in famous homes face similar nuisances. Thousands of people have visited the Albuquerque house where “Breaking Bad” antihero Walter White lived. While the owners at first enjoyed the novelty of their home’s celebrity, they soon soured on the experience and installed a fence in front of the driveway and a security camera. Now, they’ve decided it’s time to sell, and the home is on the market for more than 10 times the home’s value, courtesy of its connection with the popular show.

“You’re living in a fishbowl,” says Tommy Avallone, director of “The House From …,” a documentary about famous homes. “People are constantly looking at your house, taking pictures of your house … People feel very, very connected to these houses.” These locations also can become spontaneous memorials, as when mourners gathered outside the “Friends” apartment after the death of star Matthew Perry.

Avallone featured 66 Perry Street in his documentary and confirms the visitors to the property are “nonstop.”

The Landmarks Preservation Commission unanimously approved the bid for a gate on the Manhattan stoop.

Lorber, who purchased the building in 1978 and restored the late Italianate facade in the early 1980s, said at the hearing that she didn’t want to dissuade visitors entirely: “Take all the pictures you wish standing on the street, but please don’t climb into our space.”