Pretty Little Liars will be returning to the small screen on January 12th and I could NOT be more excited! Though I found the recent mid-season finale to be absolutely ridiculous, not to mention a total let-down (this was SO me and my mom while viewing it), to the point that I thought I might never watch again, I now find myself thrilled that new episodes are only a few days away! As detailed in my February 2015 post titled “The Pretty Little Liars Guide to Warner Bros. Studio,” the ABC Family (soon to be re-named Freeform) series is shot pretty much in its entirety on the WB lot in Burbank. The pilot, though, was lensed in Vancouver and last year I managed to track down most of the locales that appeared in the episode. (There is one that remains unfound and a real thorn in my side, but more on that later.) My good friend/fellow stalker Kerry lives in the Pacific Northwest and recently took a weekend trip up to Vancouver. I asked if she wouldn’t mind stalking some PLL locations for me while she was in town and stalk them she did! Every single one! Thank you, Kerry! So I figured what better time to blog about them than in the days leading up to the premiere – and what better locale to start with than the DiLaurentis family house, which played such a pivotal role in the pilot.
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For those not in the know, the pilot of Pretty Little Liars centers around the disappearance of a teenage girl named Alison DiLaurentis (Sasha Pieterse). The mysterious details of her disappearance, which took place a year prior, are revealed in flashbacks. In the episode, it is said that the DiLaurentis family, distraught over losing Ali, has chosen to sell their large Victorian-style residence and a new family is shown moving in.
The home was actually the first locale I tracked down from the episode. It was a snap to find thanks to its unique architecture and a “1995” number placard that I spotted above the front door in the scene in which Emily Fields (Shay Mitchell) welcomes the new girl, Maya St. Germain (Bianca Lawson), to the neighborhood. Address number in hand, I did a Google search for “1995,” “Victorian house,” and “Vancouver,” and the first link to pop up was a real estate listing for a residence located at 1995 West 19th Avenue. Sure enough, the images featured in the listing were a perfect match to Ali’s house. Wahoo!
The massive dwelling, which was originally built in the 1920s, is just as stunning in real life as it appeared onscreen (as least as evidenced by Kerry’s photos). In actuality, though, the property is not a single-family home, but a multi-unit dwelling.
The residence appears a couple of times in the pilot, most notably in the scene in which (spoiler alert!) Ali’s body is discovered buried in the side yard.
The actual interior of the property was also featured in the episode. Not only was one of the home’s bedrooms used as Maya’s bedroom . . .
. . . but, in an odd twist, the dwelling’s ornate wood-paneled stairwell masked as a back area of the church where Ali’s funeral was held. It is on those stairs that Ezra Fitzgerald (Ian Harding) and Aria Montgomery (Lucy Hale) share a passionate kiss. You can check out some photographs of the stairway here.
Once Pretty Little Liars got picked up, production moved from Vancouver to California and the DiLaurentis house was “re-created” in the Jungle area of the Warner Bros. Studio backlot. I say “re-created” because the façade that was constructed looks absolutely nothing like the house that appeared in the pilot.
Aside from a large set of entry steps, the two homes don’t resemble each other in the slightest, as you can see below.
As for the location I mentioned earlier that remains a thorn in my side? I cannot for the life of me seem to track down the interior of Hollis Bar & Grill, where Aria and Ezra met for the first time.
My buddy Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, did manage to locate the building used in the establishing shot. The exterior of Hollis Bar & Grill is actually that of Ashland City Hall, located at 20 East Main Street in Ashland, Oregon. The image shown in the scene was likely stock footage, as no actual filming took place in the Beaver State. The interior, though, remains a mystery. If any of my fellow stalkers are familiar with the Vancouver area, please take a look at the above images and let me know if you can identify the watering hole pictured in them.
Big THANK YOU to Kerry for stalking this location for me! 
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Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: The DiLaurentis house from the pilot episode of Pretty Little Liars is located at 1995 West 19th Avenue in Vancouver.
A lot of the writers and producers are pretty active on social media. It might be worth asking them about the bar location? I’m not sure who of them was on board when the pilot was shot, though. Obviously IMK, but she gets bombarded enough on Twitter that it might be hard to get her attention.
I just started binging on this show over the past couple of months, and I love it. The funny thing is, when we did a WB tour a couple of years ago, I didn’t know anything about this show, but looking back through my photos from that day, there’s Rosewood City Hall and Toby Cavanaugh’s house! I wish I’d known to pay more attention to PLL locations back then.