20 East End

Best Boutiques for Residents of All Ages Near 20 East End Avenue

Along its quiet streets lined with stately homes and leafy parks, the Upper East Side also contains some of the city’s best shopping. Beyond the name-brand designer shops of Madison Avenue are hidden gems and unique boutiques that quietly provide top-notch service and distinctive objets to the locals who live in luxury Upper East Side townhouses and penthouses. Whether you’re searching for the perfect baguette, an antique armchair, or a box of pure lapis lazuli, such treasures can be found—if you know where to look.

Families, for instance, can get beautifully styled classic children’s clothing on 78th Street at Prince and Princess, which offers European-made clothing as well as its own private line of silk dresses fit for very special occasions. Located on a shady residential street and offering concierge-style service, this is the place where you can find that heirloom-worthy baby romper, though Prince and Princess also carries a fine selection of day wear for newborns on up to young teenagers.

Singles and young couples, in contrast, might gravitate toward the area’s many wine shops. Vino-Versity on First Avenue between 86th and 87th particularly caters to a younger clientele with frequent classes and events to help refine the palate; explore the differences between French and California wines; and focus on distinctions between Champagne, Mousseux, and Crémant. The shop offers shipping as well as customized labels that can even feature pictures of your pet—a lighthearted touch that typifies the cheerful and unpretentious atmosphere of the four-year-old store. The owners and staff alike at Vino-Versity especially pride themselves on introducing customers to their selection of lesser-known and specialty labels.

With wine, of course, one needs bread, and there may be no better bakery in the city than Orwasher’s. The store at 308 East 78th Street has been baking bread and sweets daily for nearly a century. Locals have named  Orwasher’s as the place to get New York’s best jelly donut, best baguette, and best rye loaf. The popular spot also stocks spreads, juices, pickles, antipasti, coffee, chocolates, and cheese, making it a worthy destination even for paleo dieters.

Once the basics are covered, luxuries deserve some attention as well. Creel and Gow in Hayward House on 70th and Lexington offers naturalistic decorative objects from sea and land: fossils and corals, bowls and boxes of stone, beautiful taxidermy, unique vintage objects, glass vases and jars with fantastical oceanic motifs, and jewelry of hammered gold that looks at once ancient and modern. KRB, located on 79th Street between Park and Lexington, offers both 19th-century Regency furniture and silk needlework mixed with modern accents such as simple stoneware or contemporary linen cocktail napkins bearing cheeky phrases. Owner Kate Rheinstein Brodsky, daughter of decorator Suzanne Rheinstein, brings a young, fresh eye to eclectic interior design and has begun offering her own creations in the store alongside its antique and contemporary pieces.

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