POPE FRANCIS NEW YORK VISIT, STAYS IN A 5-STORY, 11,000-SQUARE-FOOT TOWNHOUSE

The signs of his arrival in the neighborhood will be less than subtle: a battalion of police officers, Secret Service agents and assorted security personnel monitoring every manhole and sidewalk crack; snipers on the rooftops; bomb-sniffing dogs at the ready.

The five-story, 11,000-square-foot townhouse where the pope will bunk during the New York portion of his trip doesn’t fade into the scenery, either: Less than a block from Central Park and across the street from the emir of Qatar’s 45,000-square-foot quasi palace, the limestone mansion was once home to New York’s youngest mayor, a Tammany Democrat named Hugh J. Grant, and his wife, who hired an architectural firm that had worked on St. Patrick’s Cathedral to install a private chapel in the house, complete with Tiffany Studios decorations.

But though Pope Francis will be the guest of honor at the Upper East Side residence when he comes to New York — with the city’s chefs and comforts at his disposal — the official residence of the apostolic nuncio and Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations will stay on the quiet side while he is there.

There is no reception for cardinals planned, no dinner for 52 with vegetable risotto prepared by cooks from the restaurants Del Posto, Becco and Felidia, as there was when Pope Benedict XVI visited in 2008. Francis’ doctor has limited him to dinners of fish and white rice, also to be prepared by guest chefs, said the Vatican’s representative to the United Nations, Archbishop Bernardito Auza. The pope himself has requested only still water and bananas in his room.

By week’s end, Francis will be the third pope to have stayed in the townhouse, which the Grant family donated to the Archdiocese of New York in 1975. Mr. Grant’s widow, Julia Murphy Grant, also founded Regis High School, the tuition-free Catholic high school for boys on the Upper East Side, in 1914.

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