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Produced by Jacqueling Gonnet
Photography by Judith Watts
Text by Bobbie Dell’Aquilo

LEX GO from 69th to 74th Streets, a haven for hard-to-find items

Just north of the Hunter College unispan and the co-ed cacophony that surrounds it is a neighborhood oasis reminiscent of old New York. This Lexington Avenue strip, from 69th Street up (and then down again over the most minimal of hills) to 73rd Street, offers some of the best sources in the city for antiques, decorative arts, and design elements. Less dramatic than the Madison Avenue couture boutiques to the west and much more intimate in scale and persona than neighboring Third Avenue, this Lenox Hill district easily provides an afternoon’s worth of shopping and an enjoyable meal. Following is a sampling of shops–by no means a complete list of the area’s destinations–that offer something for just about everyone…and then some.

Prominently in view just north of the 68th Street subway entrance is the monogrammed, black canopy of Nina Griscom (958 Lexington, 212.717.7373). Griscom’s eponymous store, on the southwest corner of 70th Street, opened last fall and joins her Southampton, New York, location in offering an array of home furnishings highlighting the exotic. Extensive shopping trips to Asia, India, Eastern Europe, and South America have provided the shop with a distinctive and flavorful collection of the old and the new including onyx, ebony, and coral items–and some amazing examples of shagreen.

Right: In Nina Griscom’s display window, bowled ostrich eggs sit beside a shagreen box.  The shop offers a taste of the exotic, including many ornamented shell accessories.

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