HOW WOODY TURNED NIMBY

Philip Delves Broughton watches a reformed

Woody Allen go about his business as a Manhattan conservationist

New York SIX feet to my left, a scuffed pair of tennis shoes on a splayed pair of feet beneath a sagging pair of brown cords is shuffling down the pavement. 'Look who it is,' says my lunch date, an indigenous Manhattanite, prodding me and jabbing a finger at waist height in an effort to be discreet.

Enveloping the upper half of the stooped figure bustling down Madison Avenue is a wide-pocketed waxed anorak and a voluminous green flat-cap, not crowning the head but swaddling it, pulled well down over the ears.

Beside him totters his much younger Korean wife, in black boots, pleated trousers and a knee-length black coat. Over her shoulder peers a baby in a woolly hat. Her husband is carrying only a plastic bag.

They look desperate to get out of the blistering cold and soon turn left towards their greystone mansion, twice the width of the houses around it. On the doorstep, Woody Allen fumbles in his oversized pockets for the keys, before going inside without turning around to see the gawpers on the other side of the street.

It is not unusual to see Allen out on the streets of New York, though until last Saturday I never had. The Wood Man is shy, but not a recluse. He goes to see the New York Knicks play basketball at Madison Square Garden, eats chicken francese at Elaine's, the celebrated restaurant, performs on his clarinet at the Carlyle Hotel and makes his films around the city.

When writers tried to describe seeing Greta Garbo in New York, it seemed as if they had seen a ghost. She was always drifting through crowds, lost in herself, spectrally pale, vanishing round corners. Allen is more tangible. He is the gnomish genius loci.

For the most part, he goes about his business quietly, splashing into public consciousness when he makes a film or marries his girlfriend's adopted daughter. But, during those quiet stretches, he will sometimes flash by, like a face staring out of a fast-moving underground carriage, reminding you that not all of New York is change and restless appetite.

Last month his father died. Martin Konigsberg, a former waiter and jewelleryengraver, had turned 100 on Christmas Day. Early in January, Allen, who was born Allen Stewart Konigsberg, proudly told New York's blue-collar paper, the Daily News, 'My father is a classic example of a guy who has smoked two packs a day since he was 16, eats two eggs for breakfast and meat for dinner seven days a week, dishes of ice-cream before bed at night. He gets up every morning, has all his hair, most of his marbles, 20-20 eyesight and reads his Daily News like he did back in Brooklyn.' The day after his comments were published, his father was dead.

Last October, Allen wrote a lovely paean to his favourite basketball player, Patrick Ewing, a veteran New York Knick, who had just been transferred to another team. Ewing had been with the Knicks all his career, a great player forced to toil among mediocrities. By the time he was surrounded by players who could win New York a championship, he was riven by injuries. Ewing possessed a surly magnificence, never complaining but rarely smiling. His departure, many fans felt, was a betrayal.

Allen wrote in the New York Times: 'There's a deeper value in teams keeping Certain players for life despite the inevitable diminution of their skills. There's more to

sports than the big money and not even winning is so precious. There's something intangible that makes contests between great teams or gifted individuals not just beautiful to watch but profoundly meaningful, even though in the overall scheme of things they are demonstrably meaningless.'

His most public recent activity, however, has been as a preservationist — or Nimby, in the eyes of Manhattan's voracious property developers. It began when Allen decided to settle down with Soon-Yi Previn, Mia Farrow's adopted daughter, and abandoned what was known as New York's ultimate bachelor pad, a 6,000 square foot, one-bedroom flat facing Central Park.

He and his new bride moved into one of the largest homes on the Upper East Side, an elegant townhouse in Carnegie Hill which, though just 65 years old, might have been sketched by Edith Wharton. It is the kind of home that you might imagine an exiled king or Wall Street baron living in, someone powerful yet unrecognisable, not one of the city's celebrities, who generally prefer cloud-cloaked skyscrapers guarded from the world by doormen and lifts.

Carnegie Hill is a place for settling. Its streets choke on nannies and prams, vigorous young couples in fleece-tops heading out for brunch, a passing Bentley, though it may as well be a horse-drawn brougham. The buildings are very old New York and the schools are top-notch.

Since arriving in 1999, Allen has appealed three times to New York's Landmarks Commission to block planned buildings in the area. First it was a 17-storey block of flats around the corner from his house. Allen not only testified before the commission, but also made a short film about how the proposed development would spoil the historic contours of Carnegie Hill. He prowled the room as the commission made its decision, reminding them by his presence who was the real guardian of Manhattan's public image. He won.

Now he is opposing a plan to develop a nearby mansion into an annexe of the Spence School, Manhattan's top private girls' school, which recently produced Gwyneth Paltrow. He is also scuppering the hopes of neighbours who want to expand their 1888 townhouse. Allen has become a one-man heritage commission.

Some in the city will never forgive Allen for his relationship with Soon-Yi, whom he has known from childhood. In many minds, he will for ever be a dirty old man or worse. His recent actions may be an attempt to reingratiate himself with a city that suddenly found his drooping face an embarrassment rather than a source of pride.

In his film Annie Hall, Allen warns Annie that most provincials think of New Yorkers as left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers'. At 65, with his browns and greens fading into Central Park, his eyes peering ever more sadly out of those glasses, Allen is something else: the conservative protector of a vanishing city.