Brownstones in Pop Culture: Nero Wolfe

Rex Stout’s fictional detective Nero Wolfe lives in a luxurious and comfortable New York City brownstone on West 35th Street. Because there are no actual brownstones in that part of New York; the producers used the exterior of 44 West 76th street for the A&E TV series A Nero Wolfe Mystery.

New York City and The Wolfe Pack (official fanclub) honored writer Rex Stout and his fictional, eccentric private detective, Nero Wolfe, with a bronze plaque at 454 West 35th Street on Saturday, June 22, 1996. In Rex Stout’s 73 Nero Wolfe mysteries, the street address of Wolfe’s West 35th Street brownstone wanders as far east as 9th Avenue and as far west as the middle of the Hudson River.

The Wolfe Pack—donated a bronze plaque to New York City to honor Stout’s work. They had identified 454 West 35th Street as the probable site of the fictional brownstone. The plaque reads: “On this site stood the elegant brownstone of the corpulent fictional private detective Nero Wolfe. With his able assistant Archie Goodwin, Mr. Wolfe raised orchids and dined well, while solving over seventy cases as recorded by Rex Stout from 1934-1975.”