City Island: A ‘Little Magical Wonderland’ in the Bronx

When Wendy Yang Clark first arrived on City Island, a place she had never heard of, it was early-morning dark. A costume designer, she was there to work on the HBO series “Boardwalk Empire” in this narrow, 1.5-mile-long section of the Bronx.

“Then the sun comes up,” Ms. Clark said of that life-changing moment a decade ago, “and I’m in this little magical wonderland.”

A woman walked by with several children, all carrying beach paraphernalia. “I asked her, ‘Is there a beach on this island?’ and she said, ‘There’s a beach on almost every block.’”

Ms. Clark, 41, who was born in Hong Kong, studied theater at New York University, graduating in 2003. After renting in several Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens neighborhoods, she considered leaving New York, with its clutter and high prices, before she discovered City Island.

A year and a half later, she and her then-husband bought “a really amazing” six-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath Victorian house with a “nice-size yard” on a corner lot for $600,000. Now she can walk one minute to her local beach, or 10 minutes across the bridge connecting City Island to the mainland and to the much larger Orchard Beach, which has two playgrounds. She goes there with her second husband, Ian Clark, 50, the owner of a Brooklyn record store, their 3-year-old daughter and his 6-year-old daughter.