Ban on smoking may add to appeal

DEEP in the bowels of what New Yorkers call The Village, there is, unusually for the city, a little narrow, winding street sandwiched between two wide boulevards.

Halfway along, hidden from view, you will, if you look hard enough, discover a narrow opening barely three feet off the ground. It is flanked by a pair of bollards and covered by a faded, chipped wooden covering that looks like a door. It is indeed a door, but it has no handle or knob, no knocker and no bell, no obvious way of going through it.

Unbeknownst to most New Yorkers, it hides a secret garden, accessed only by an elite few.