Gossip Girl – Page 2 – IAMNOTASTALKER

October 27, 2009October 27, 2009

Grand Central Station

Yet another Gossip Girl filming location that I stalked a few weeks back while vacationing in Manhattan is the train station known as Grand Central Terminal. But being that Grand Central has actually been featured in more than a few hundred productions since it first opened in 1913, it’s not really accurate to refer to the place simply as a “Gossip Girl filming location”. Truth be told, being that the building is a National Historic Landmark and has been in operation for close to a century now, it’s really not fair to refer to the place as a “filming location” at all. The fact that the station has been immortalized in countless films and television shows over the years is more of a side-note than anything else. Truth be told, Grand Central Station, or Grand Central Terminal as it is officially called, is not only the largest train station in the entire world, but is also a marvel of modern-day architecture and one of the cornerstones of New York History. The terminal, which boasts 44 platforms and 67 different tracks and covers over 48 acres of space!!!, first opened on February 2, 1913 after a staggering ten years of construction. The Beaux-Arts style building was actually designed by two architectural firms – the firm of Reed & Stern handled the engineering, while Warren and Westmore conducted the aesthetic composition. And the place truly is a site to behold! The station’s main concourse is absolutely breathtaking – I mean my breath was literally taken away the first time I saw it! Seeing the huge shafts of sunlight stream through the concourse’s many window panels, as Hal Morey captured so beautifully in this photograph, is something everyone should experience in person at least once in their lives. The main concourse’s Grand Staircase which is made of marble and which was modeled after the main staircase in the Paris Opera House, is flanked by three beautiful – and HUGE – 75-foot tall leaded glass windows (pictured above).

On a side note – The Grand Staircase is also, coincidentally, where I took one of my very favorite photographs of New York (pictured above)! LOL LOL LOL

But my favorite part of the terminal’s main concourse has to be its ceiling! Oh, the ceiling! Grand Central’s beautiful, vaulted ceiling, which features a mural of Zodiac signs painted backwards was designed and created in 1912 by artist Paul Helleu and contains over 2,500 stars which actually light up. The reason for the backwards Zodiac depiction, you ask? The mural is supposed to represent the view of the stars a god would see while looking down upon planet Earth through the heavens.

The exterior of Grand Central Station is also quite remarkable, as you can see in the above photograph.

In 1914, while the station was under construction, French sculptor Jules-Alexis Coutans designed a 48 -foot tall statue of the Roman gods Minerva, Hercules, and Mercury which was to sit sentinel above Grand Central’s 42nd Street entrance. The statue, which was carved by the John Donnelly Company, also boasts a central glass clock measuring a whopping 13 feet in circumference. The clock was designed by none other than Tiffany & Co. and represents the largest example of Tiffany Glass in the entire world.

At night, the exterior becomes even more spectacular.

As you can see in the above picture, Grand Central is usually bustling with commuters and visitors alike! In fact, more than 500,000 people walk through the terminal’s doors EACH DAY!!!! (No, that’s not a typo – I really meant EACH DAY!) According to this fabulous article, in the year 1947 alone over 65 MILLION people visited Grand Central – an amount which equaled 40% of the entire popular of the United States at the time!

Which makes it all the more amazing that the station’s doors were almost shuttered in the 1950s. Due to the decline of railroads as a popular means of transportation, the terminal faced demolition on numerous different occasions beginning in the year 1954. Thankfully all such plans were subsequently thwarted, until 1967 when Penn Central Railroad announced its plans to tear down Grand Central and replace it with a sixty-plus story office building. Thankfully, New York preservationists, most notably former First Lady Jackie O., stepped in to stop the project. Jackie’s efforts took her all the way to the United States Supreme Court, where a ten year battle was fought over the station. Penn Central eventually lost the case and Grand Central was awarded landmark status, eliminating any further possibility of it ever being destroyed or changed. In 1994, the terminal was taken over by the Metro-North company, who subsequently began an extensive renovation process, restoring the terminal to her original glory to the tune of $250 million. Today Grand Central is as beautiful, and as busy, as ever. Besides being simply a commuter hub, today’s Grand Central Station also boasts fifty different retail stores and five different upscale restaurants, including the world-famous Oyster Bar which has been in operation since the station first opened in 1913. And, of course, as I mentioned before, the terminal is also a frequent filming location!

Grand Central has been featured in two different episodes of Gossip Girl – the Pilot episode and the Season Two episode entitled “Oh Brother, Where Bart Thou?”. In the Pilot, It-girl Serena van der Woodsen is spotted at Grand Central while making her infamous return to New York after a year spent in a Connecticut boarding school.

In that same episode, Rufus Humphrey picks up his kids, Dan and Jenny, at Grand Central after a weekend spent with their mother.

And yet again in that very same episode, Grand Central’s famous Campbell Apartment Bar, which I have blogged about once before, shows up at the site of Nate and Serena’s illicit tryst.

In the “Oh Brother, Where Bart Thou?” episode, Rufus confronts Lily about the child she never told him about while standing in the middle of Grand Central’s main concourse.

The Campbell Apartment also shows up in that episode as the spot where Chuck Bass hires a private investigator to look into the background of his deceased father’s widow.

Grand Central, as well as its flap-board destination sign, figure prominently in the end of fave teeny-bopper movie Just My Luck.

Other movies that have filmed at the terminal include North By Northwest, Armageddon, Carlito’s Way, Hackers, I Am Legend, K-PAX, Men In Black and its sequel Men In Black II, Midnight Run, Old Dogs, Party Monster, Revolutionary Road, The Bone Collector, The Cotton Club, The Fisher King, One Fine Day, Conspiracy Theory, Midnight Run, Loser, Falling In Love, The Prince of Tides, The Freshman, The Perfect Score, The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, and Unfaithful. And, Grand Central replicas have even been built on studio soundstages when filming on location at the actual station wasn’t feasible, as was the case with Superman, Twentieth Century, Going Hollywood, The Thin Man Goes Home and Beneath the Planet of the Apes.

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On a “must-see” side note – One of Grand Central’s most famous spots, an area which I, sadly, have yet to visit, is the Whispering Gallery, which is located in the station’s Dining Concourse. As the name suggests, thanks to the laws of physics and the Gallery’s domed ceiling, two friends can stand at opposite corners of the room, face the walls, and whisper to each other and those whispers will be carried, quite loudly, from one corner of the room to the other. How amazingly cool is that? Fellow stalker Owen has even tested out this marvel of science and says it really does work! I absolutely cannot wait to try it out myself next year!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Grand Central Station is located on 42nd Street, in between Lexington and Park Avenues. Docent-led tours of the station are given each Wednesday afternoon at 12:30 p.m. by the Municipal Arts Society. The Whispering Gallery is located in the station’s Dining Concourse near the world-famous Oyster Bar. The Campbell Apartment is located at 15 Vanderbilt Avenue, just off Grand Central’s main concourse area. Sadly though, the bar has recently come under new ownership and the dress code has been changed. And, for some incredibly odd reason, it seems no one on the Campbell Apartment staff knows exactly what the new dress code entails. When we called the bar to inquire about the dress code prior to our arrival, we were told that jeans and tennis shoes were permissible. But when we showed up we were denied entrance . . . due to our jeans and tennis shoes. LOL Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind a place upholding a dress code, at all. In fact, I quite like it. But if you’re going to do so, the staff should darn well be able to tell patrons CORRECTLY what that dress code is!

October 26, 2009October 26, 2009

The New York Palace Hotel

Yet another Gossip Girl location that I set out to stalk during this year’s Manhattan vacation was the New York Palace Hotel, a locale which has appeared in pretty much every single episode of the series since it began back in 2007. Truth be told, though, I actually first stalked this location quite a few years back during my very first trip to the Big Apple, long before Gossip Girl was even on the air. And, let me tell you, I absolutely fell in love with the place! Each year since then I’ve made sure to stop into the Palace at least once during our annual New York vacation to either grab a cocktail at GILT or to simply relax for a few minutes in the hotel’s opulent lobby. So, as you can probably imagine, I was completely floored this past summer when I first watched the pilot episode of Gossip Girl and realized that a huge portion of it was filmed on location on the hotel grounds. So, while in New York two weeks ago, I just had to drag my fiancé back to the Palace, this time to do some stalking of my new favorite show! 🙂

The New York Palace Hotel is absolutely beautiful inside and out and is one of my very favorite places to visit in all of New York. By now, I really must sound like a broken record due to the fact that I pretty much say that about every single place I stalk in the Big Apple. LOL But it’s just that there are so many spectacular and incredibly unique places on the island of Manhattan that I find it very difficult to narrow down my favorites! Anyway, the New York Palace Hotel was originally built as a private home for New York Evening Post editor and Union Pacific Railroad founder Henry Villard in 1882. Villard hired the architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White to design and build six four-story townhouses surrounding a central courtyard in an empty lot across from St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The buildings were constructed in a Neo-Italian Renaissance style and were modeled after Rome’s Palazzo della Cancellaria. In 1883, Villard moved into his new home, which was still under construction, for a period of just a few months. Sadly, though, he ended up filing bankruptcy shortly thereafter and was forced to sell the entire property, which was then known as the Villard Houses, to several different owners before construction had even been completed. In 1974, the townhouses were purchased by the Helmsley (yes, that Helmsley) Hotel chain. The Helmsleys came up with the inspired idea to purchase the air space above the Villard Houses (and here all this time I never knew that type of thing was for sale! LOL) in order to add a 55-story tower to the property and turn it into a luxury hotel. Construction of that tower took six years to complete and in 1981 the Helmsley Palace Hotel finally opened its doors to the world. It didn’t take long for the Palace name to become synonymous with the utmost in luxury and elegance. In 1992, the hotel was sold to a private limited partnership, who changed its name to the New York Palace Hotel, as it is known today. The Palace Hotel is currently owned by the upscale Dorchester Group and boasts 360 square-foot guest rooms, 22,000 square feet of meeting space, two restaurants, including GILT, which has been awarded two Michelin stars , and a 7,000 square foot spa and gym, where complimentary tennis shoes and workout clothes are made available to guests. LOVE IT! Rooms average $297 per night, which is incredibly low for such upscale accommodations, especially considering that the hotel is located in Manhattan.

The Palace Hotel features prominently on Gossip Girl, not only because the hostelry is owned by Bart Bass, Chuck’s father, on the show, but also due to the fact that Serena van der Woodsen and family lived in one of the hotel’s Triplex Suites while their home was being remodeled during Season One. The hotel is such an integral part of the show, actually, that, according to this article, filming of GG takes places there at least twice a month! How cool is that?? The areas of the hotel that have been used in the filming over the past three years include the front exterior (pictured above),

the central courtyard,

the second floor mezzanine,

the lobby’s courtyard entrance,

the special events venue named the Madison Room,

the entrance to the famous GILT restaurant,

the interior of GILT,

and the GILT kitchen.

In fact, GILT’s menu now even features “The Gossip Girl – You Know You Love It” grilled cheese and truffle oil sandwich (YUM!), much like the one Chuck made for Serena in the pilot episode. 🙂 My good friend Steffi, who is also a HUGE GG fan, is holding GILT’s menu in the above picture.

Besides being a main filming location for Gossip Girl, the Palace is also a celebrity magnet. According to fave book, Michael Jackson: The Magic, The Madness, The Full Story, back during his “Thriller” days, the Palace was the only New York Hotel where the King of Pop would rest his head. The hotel also plays host to a number of A-List events each year. A few of the stars who have been spotted there in the past include Prince, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Lady Gaga, Orlando Bloom, Harry Connick, Jr., Helena Christenson, Claire Danes, Hugh Dancy, Molly Sims, Kristin Davis, Bethenny Frankel, and Rose McGowan.

I honestly can’t recommend stalking the New York Palace Hotel enough! The staff is INCREDIBLY friendly – one of the concierges even went so far as to get me a GILT menu when I was there two weeks ago just so that I could take a picture of the Gossip Girl sandwich listing! 🙂 And the entire property – from the Central Courtyard to the ornate lobby – is just simply breathtaking. I honestly can’t say enough about it! Especially at Christmastime! If you find yourself in the area during the month of December, stopping by to see the Palace’s Christmas decorations, which are pictured above, is a MUST! Christmas trees, garland, and white twinkle lights can be found EVERYWHERE, especially in the hotel’s Central Courtyard which is absolutely transformed into a mass of sparkle. LOVE IT!

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For further information on the hotel you can read an amazingly in-depth review, written by someone who actually stayed there, here. Although, because the author listed the fact that Palace’s “popular restaurant/bar is closed intermittently for film crews” under the Con section of her Palace Hotel Pros and Cons List, you have to take everything she says with a grain of salt. LOL I mean, for me that little tidbit is SO totally a Pro! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The New York Palace Hotel is located at 455 Madison Avenue in Manhattan. You can visit their website here.

October 23, 2009October 22, 2009

Gossip Girl’s Constance Billard School for Girls and St. Jude’s School for Boys

Another Upper East Side location that I set out to stalk while in New York two weeks ago was the building used to portray Constance Billard School for Girls and St. Jude’s School for Boys on my new favorite show, Gossip Girl. So, you can imagine my surprise when, while doing some location research before my trip, I discovered that not one, but FOUR different spots have actually been used to stand in for Nate, Chuck, and the gang’s elite prep school throughout the series two and half year run. And let me just take a moment here to say that using several different locales to represent just one place is one of my biggest filming location pet peeves for the mere fact that it makes tracking down sites all the more difficult for us stalkers. UGH! Why do producers do this to us??? I mean, just pick one location and stick with it, already!!! LOL Anyway, due to time constraints, I was unfortunately only able to visit one of the Gossip Girl school sites during this year’s trip to the Big Apple – the Museum of the City of New York.

Ironically enough, during one of our past trips to the Big Apple just about three years ago, long before Gossip Girl had ever premiered on TV, my fiancé had actually dragged me out to the Museum of the City of New York as a sort of cultural diversion. So, when we finally started watching the series this past summer, the two of us immediately recognized the building used as the gang’s school. And I have to say that my fiancé was more than just a little bit smug about the fact that I had whined and complained about being dragged to the museum all those years ago, when, in fact, the place had turned out to be a filming location – on one of my favorite shows, no less! 🙂 LOL Anyway, since I had failed to take any photographs of the museum while there three years ago, I, of course, had to make a quick stop there during this trip.

The Museum of the City of New York is the most recognizable out of all of the Gossip Girl school locations, as it is the place most often used for establishing shots of Constance Billard and St. Jude on the show. In fact, the Museum has shown up in pretty much every single episode of the series since the show first began.

And while the Museum has most often been used solely for establishing shots on the show, there have been a few instances where the filming of actual scenes has taken place there, as well, such as in the scene pictured above which is from the Season Two episode entitled “In The Realm of the Basses”.

But don’t go looking around the Museum for the exterior stairway where the gang sometimes hung out during Season One. Those steps, which are pictured above, can actually be found about twenty blocks South of the Museum at a Russian Orthodox Church named the Synod of Bishops.

And to confuse matters even further, during the second season of the show, producers stopped filming the Constance Billard/St. Jude scenes on location at the Synod of Bishops and moved to another location entirely – this one not even on the island of Manhattan! For whatever reason, it seems that during Season Two all location shooting for the school scenes took place at Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn.

And where is the Constance Billard/St. Jude school’s small interior courtyard that shows up in pretty much every episode, you ask? Not at any of the three aforementioned locales, actually. No, this location, unfortunately, can only be found inside of a soundstage at Silvercup Studios, where the show is filmed. 🙁

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Because I was only able to stalk the Museum of the City of New York on this trip, it looks I am going to have to hit up both the Synod of Bishops and Packer Collegiate Institute next year. I’d also just LOVE to stalk Silvercup Studios, but somehow I don’t think they’d let me past the guard shack there. LOL

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: On Gossip Girl, the four locations which stand in for Constance Billard School for Girls and St. Jude’s School for Boys are as follows: the site used for most exterior shots is the Museum of the City of New York, which is located at 1220 Fifth Avenue on New York’s Upper East Side; the school stairway from Season One can be found at the Synod of Bishops Russian Orthodox Church, which is located at 75 East 93rd Street, also on New York’s Upper East Side; the school campus used in Season Two can be found at Packer Collegiate Institute, which is located at 170 Joralemon Street in Brooklyn, and, finally, the school’s courtyard is located at Silvercup Studios, which is located at 42-22 22nd Avenue in Long Island City. Sadly, the studio is closed to the public. 🙁

October 22, 2009October 22, 2009

Blair Waldorf’s Gossip Girl Apartment Building

Well, it must be Gossip Girl week here at Iamnotastalker.com because here I am once again blogging about yet another location from the ubiquitous CW series. While in New York two weeks ago, one of the locales at the very top of my stalking list was the Upper East Side building where Queen Bee Blair Waldorf lives on my new favorite show. I found this location, once again, thanks to FanPop’s awesome Gossip Girl page and, because I love me some BW, I just simply wasn’t leaving New York until I had stalked her place. So, after dropping my best friend, his girlfriend, and his mother off at the Guggenheim Museum – because as I’ve mentioned before, I don’t do museums 🙂 – I dragged my fiancé just a few blocks North to do some stalking of Blair’s pad. On a side note: While doing research on Blair’s apartment building for today’s post, I came across this ABSOLUTELY AMAZING website, which lists pretty much EVERY SINGLE location ever featured on Gossip Girl! And, let me tell you, I almost fell off my chair while looking at it! HOW IN THE HECK DID I NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS SITE BEFORE I LEFT FOR NEW YORK! UGH! 🙁 I could have spent my entire trip stalking Gossip Girl!!!!! LOL Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to set that as my goal for next year’s trip! 🙂

On Gossip Girl, Blair Waldorf lives in the Penthouse apartment of the ultra-exclusive Fifth Avenue building pictured above. The 15-story building, which houses 43 different apartments, was built in 1925 by architect George F. Pelham, Jr., who also designed the Castle Village apartment complex in Hudson Heights and the residential building located at 1120 Park Avenue. A two-bedroom unit in Blair’s building, which you can take a look at here, is currently for sale for the bargain price of $2,695,000! Besides views of Central Park, the building also boasts a full-time, white-gloved doorman AND a full-time, white-gloved elevator operator. That’s just so Blair Waldorf, isn’t it? 🙂 So love it!

Blair’s building has been featured regularly in establishing shots throughout the series’ two and a half year run. Filming also took place there for the Season One episode entitled “Victor, Victrola”, in which Nate Archibald and his father get into a fistfight on the sidewalk out in front of the building (pictured above).

In the Season Two episode entitled “In the Realm of the Basses”, Blair receives an invitation from the elite Colony Club in which the actual address of the real apartment building used for the filming is displayed. Love it!

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According to fave book Manhattan On Film: Walking Tours of Hollywood’s Fabled Front Lot, Blair’s building was also used in the 2001 Chris Rock movie Down to Earth, as the residence of Charles Wellington, whose body the spirit of Chris Rock inhabits after his untimely demise. The building also has a bit of celebrity history, as well. During their marriage, Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid owned a seven-room unit on the building’s 12th-floor, which they sold in March 2002, almost a year after their divorced was finalized, for a cool $6.5 million.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Blair Waldorf’s apartment from Gossip Girl is located at 1136 Fifth Avenue, on the corner of 5th Avenue and 95th Street, on New York’s Upper East Side.

October 21, 2009June 16, 2011

The Central Park Conservatory Water

Because I spoke only very briefly about the Central Park Conservatory Water in yesterday’s post regarding the filming of Gossip Girl, today I thought I’d do a more in-depth blog on that location and the myriad of filming that has taken place there over the years. So, here goes. 🙂 The Conservatory Water is so named because in the original plans for Central Park, which were drawn up in 1857 by designers Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux, an oval-shaped conservatory, or greenhouse, containing tropical plants was to be situated in the area where the Model Boat Pond now stands. When the money for that particular project fell through, Olmstead and Vaux instead decided to place an oval-shaped model boat pond, designed after those in Paris’ Jardin du Luxembourg, in the exact spot where the conservatory was originally positioned. Hence the name “Conservatory Water”. Over the years, the Pond became incredibly popular with children and adults alike and, thanks to the model yacht races which are held there each weekend, the area has come to be more commonly known as the “Model Boat Pond”. In fact, ask any New Yorker for directions to the Conservatory Water and I doubt they’d know what you were talking about. 🙂

Besides its weekend boat races, the Conservatory Water is also famous for two statues which are situated along its perimeter. The statue pictured above is of children’s author Hans Christian Andersen, who penned the stories “The Little Mermaid”, “The Snow Queen”, and “Thumbelina”, among countless others. In the statue Hans is depicted reading his tale “The Ugly Duckling” to an attentive little duck. So cute!!! And please don’t ask what the heck I am wearing in the above picture – it was a freezing cold and rainy day in New York and I threw on whatever warm clothes I could find. LOL

At the North end of the pond sits the famous Alice in Wonderland statue, in which Alice cavorts atop a life-sized mushroom with her friends the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat, the Dormouse, and the White Rabbit. The statue was commissioned in 1959 by George T. Delacorte, founder of the Dell Publishing Company, in honor of his wife. Legend has it that George’s face was the model for the face of the Mad Hatter in the statue. 🙂

The Model Boat Pond is so incredibly beautiful and picturesque, with its flat pool of reflecting water, curving benches running along its perimeter, lush green foliage and pink cherry trees juxtaposed against the towering skyscrapers of Manhattan’s Upper East Side, that it’s not very hard to see why producers have returned to film there time and time again.

In fave movie 13 Going On 30, the Model Boat Pond shows up very briefly during the montage scene in which Jenna is shown enjoying her newfound age. You can see the Alice and Wonderland statue in the background of the first screen capture pictured above.

In fave show Sex and the City, the Model Boat Pond shows up in the Season One episode entitled “The Power of Female Sex”, in the scene in which Carrie takes French Architect Gilles on a tour of the city. While at the Pond, Carrie says, “I felt like I had landed in a Claude Lelouch film”, Lelouch being a French film director known for his picturesque cinematography. The Alice and Wonderland statue shows up in this scene, as well – Carrie is sitting on top of it in the first screen capture pictured above.

In Just My Luck, yet another of my favorite teeny-bopper movies, cutie Chris Pine has some incredibly bad luck while visiting the Model Boat Pond at the very beginning of the film. Again you’ll notice the Alice in Wonderland statue pictured in the background above. It seems to be a favorite of filmmakers. 🙂

In the 1998 movie The Object of my Affection, it is while sitting on a bench overlooking the Pond that my girl Jen Aniston tells Paul Rudd that she is pregnant.

In fave movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Fred is followed by Doc Golightly, Holly’s former husband, while taking a stroll near the Conservatory Water.

And in the 1999 movie Stuart Little, Stuart (who was voiced by none other than Alex P. Keaton himself – Michael J. Fox) and his pal Jonathan Lipnicki race a model sailboat at the Pond. (That’s Hugh Laurie, aka Dr. House M.D., who plays Stuart and Jonathan’s dad in the flick, pictured in the second screen capture above!)

The producers definitely took some liberties while filming this scene, though, because while the race starts out at the Model Boat Pond, it ends up in the Central Park Reservoir, which, contrary to what the movie would have you believe, is not actually connected to the Pond and is, in fact, located quite a few miles away.

At one point, the boats even sail under a small bridge, but, being that the Model Boat Pond has no bridge, I am going to go out on a limb here and say that I’m fairly certain this scene wasn’t actually filmed in Central Park. My guess is that the scene was filmed a few thousand miles away on a soundstage at Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City. LOL When watching that scene, you’ll notice that the camera never pans back far enough to show the entire Pond, leading me to believe that producers built their own version of it at the studio in Los Angeles which they then used for the filming.

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The Pond also showed up in I’m Not Rappaport, F/X, Jungle 2 Jungle, The Mirror Has Two Faces, Key Exchange and in 1964’s The World of Henry Orient. And it has even been immortalized in print, as well! In J.D. Salinger’s famous Catcher in the Rye novel, Holden Caulfield laments his problems to the Conservatory Water’s resident ducks.

I honestly cannot recommend stalking the Model Boat Pond enough!! It is one of my very favorite places in all of New York! In fact, one of my favorite things to do while visiting the city is to grab a bagel from a street vendor and eat it while sitting on one of the many benches surrounding the Pond – weather permitting, of course. 🙂 Which is exactly what my best friend, Kylee, and fiancé are doing in the above photograph which was taken during my 30th birthday trip to the Big Apple. 🙂 Ironically enough, while doing research on the Pond for today’s post, I kept running across the following sentence – or some variation of it – written again and again: “The Conservatory Water is so relaxing and peaceful that you almost forget you are in New York.” But to me, the Pond is a perfect representation of what it is that makes New York so incredibly unique. I mean where else can you find a huge and incredibly quiet and picturesque piece of nature located smack dab in the middle of a beautiful, bustling, towering city? 🙂 No, for me, the Model Boat Pond couldn’t be more New York and I never forget what city I am in while visiting it! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Conservatory Water, aka the Model Boat Pond, is located in Central Park on New York’s Upper East Side and can be reached from 72nd through 75th Streets.

October 20, 2009October 20, 2009

Watching The Filming of Gossip Girl

Two weeks ago while in New York, thanks to fave website OnLocationVacations – who I am now seriously thinking of naming my first born after 🙂 – I was able to watch the filming of Gossip Girl live and in person no less than THREE times!!!!! Yes, you read that right – THREE TIMES! For those not familiar with the site, OnLocationVacations features a “Daily Filming Locations” page that chronicles which productions are filming where all over the U.S. – most notably on the island of Manhattan. So, I, of course, checked that page pretty much immediately after I woke up every morning while on my New York vacation. And, as you can probably imagine, I just about died when on October 5th I read that my new fave show Gossip Girl would be filming in Central Park, just a few blocks away from the hotel where I was staying. So, I immediately dragged my fiancé, my best friend, Robin, his girlfriend, Stephanie, and his mother, who were all visiting from Switzerland at the time, out to the Conservatory Water, which is more commonly known as the Model Boat Pond, in Central Park to do some GG stalking! THANK YOU OnLocationVacations! 🙂 (On our way to the set, Stephanie and I spotted the above pictured Craft Services truck and were SO excited we just had to stop and snap a quick pic!) 🙂

Upon arriving at the Model Boat Pond, I, of course, struck up a conversation with a few crew members from the show who really could NOT have been nicer or more friendly. They chatted with me about where filming was taking place specifically and about who was on set at the time. The only cast member present when we showed up, though, was Taylor Momsen, who plays Jenny Humphrey, aka “Little J”, on the show. Taylor was very cute in person and much taller than I expected her to be, but, unfortunately, she also looked a bit under-the-weather. During breaks she pretty much just sat off to the side of the production and kept to herself. The next day, I heard that she actually collapsed from exhaustion a few hours after we left the set! Poor Taylor!

Also on set that morning was Air Bud actor Kevin Zegers who will be guest-starring as Little’s J.’s new love interest on several episodes of Gossip Girl this season. Because I didn’t recognize him, while we were there I asked around to see if any of the crew members could tell me who he was, but no one seemed to know. LOL One crew member told me that Kevin had starred in the Spiderman movies, but that information turned out to be incorrect. LOL It wasn’t until after I got home that fellow stalker Owen was able to identify him for me. Thank you, Owen! 🙂 Anyway, after watching the filming for about thirty minutes or so, my fiancé and best friend dragged me away from the set. 🙁 Needless to say, neither one of them is very much into filming locations. LOL

But have no fear, because later that afternoon, I, of course, dragged everyone back to Central Park to see if any of the other cast members had shown up. I was hoping most of all to see Ed Westwick (aka Chuck Bass) and Leighton Meester (aka Blair Waldorf) because, as I mentioned yesterday, they are my two favorite actors on the show. I so heart Chuck Bass!!!! So, as you can imagine, I literally almost fell over when I walked up to the set and saw my two faves standing hand in hand filming a scene! YAY! I could NOT have been more excited! And it seems that I’m not the only one who reads OnLocationVacations because there were at least two hundred fans and paparazzi standing around watching the filming when we arrived. 🙂

I cannot tell you how exciting it was to watch GG being filmed right before my very eyes!!!!! The scene being shot involved Chuck and Blair taking a leisurely stroll through Central Park just East of the Model Boat Pond.

We literally took close to 500 pictures while watching the filming that afternoon, so deciding which ones to post here proved to be rather difficult. LOL I wanted to post them ALL! But that probably would have crashed my entire blog, so I had to settle for a select few. 🙂

Leighton Meester is absolutely BEAUTIFUL in person – much prettier than she appears to be on TV – and MUCH taller than I had expected!! I thought she would be teeny tiny, but in person she looked to be about 5’6”.

But I have to say that seeing Chuck Bass in person was my favorite part of the day! 🙂 Like Leighton, Ed Westwick is also much better looking in person than he appears to be on TV, but what struck me the most about him was the fact that he makes the SAME EXACT facial expressions in real life that he does while acting as Chuck on the show. LOVE IT! Stephanie and I were cracking up the whole time while watching him because he is just so similar to his character.

In between takes Leighton and Ed hung out together on set and seemed to get along really, really well. They were laughing and joking together and appeared to really enjoy each other’s company. It was very cool to see.

And when she wasn’t chatting with Ed, Leighton was pretty much glued to her blackberry. A girl after my own heart, I swear! 🙂

Unfortunately, as you can see in the above photos, during most of the breaks from shooting a big guy in a red sweatshirt stood in front of Ed and Leighton blocking the paparazzi’s view of the two stars and making it rather difficult for me to take photos. 🙁

Because Chuck and Blair are my fave GG characters, I pretty much hit the jackpot with the filming I got to see. I felt really bad for Stephanie, though, as she was absolutely dying to see Serena (aka Blake Lively) in person. The closest we got to seeing her, though, was when her stand-in walked by (pictured above). And, let me tell you, it was absolutely uncanny how much her stand-in looked like her! Everyone started furiously snapping photos of her until she got close enough for us to realize that it wasn’t actually Blake Lively. LOL

The following morning, October 6th, I once again checked OnLocationVacations and was FLOORED to discover that GG was filming on location yet again – this time in SoHo. So, much to my fiancé and best friend’s chagrin, I once more dragged everyone out to the set to do some stalking. LOL This time actor Penn Badgley, who plays Dan Humphrey on the show, was shooting a scene by himself. And, for some incredibly odd reason, besides the ever-present paparazzi, we were the only stalkers on the set that day. And can I just say here that I so love the New York paparazzi!!! They are so incredibly friendly and so incredibly different from the L.A. paps, who always seem to have a chip on their shoulder. One photog that I struck up a conversation with told us exactly where to stand to get a good pic of Penn. And, sure enough, he was right! It wasn’t two minutes after we moved to where the photog had told us to stand that Penn walked RIGHT BY! 🙂

So, of course, I asked him if he would mind taking a quick photograph with us. Penn was SUPER nice and said that he had to film a really quick scene, but that he’d be happy to pose with us afterwards. You can see him filming the scene in the monitors pictured above.

So, while Penn filmed his brief scene, Stephanie and I waited off to the side and, as promised, just a few minutes later he walked by us once again. When he got close to us he stopped and said to his bodyguard, “Hold on a second, I promised these girls a picture.” How sweet is that!!!!! Sigh!!!!! So darn cool!

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All in all it was an AMAZING experience being on the GG set. The cast and crew could NOT have been friendlier and I had an absolute blast being there! I highly recommend stalking the show if you ever have the opportunity!

A big THANK YOU goes out to OnLocationVacations without whom none of this would have been possible!!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Gossip Girl scenes with Taylor Momsen, Ed Westwick, and Leighton Meester were filmed on the East and West sides of the Conservatory Water, aka the Model Boat Pond, in Central Park near 74th Street and Fifth Avenue. The scene with Penn Badgley was filmed in SoHo at the corner of North Moore and Varick Streets.

October 19, 2009October 19, 2009

Nate Archibald’s Townhouse

Rather than suffer through the re-run abyss airing on most television networks this past summer, my fiance and I instead decided to purchase and watch the first two seasons of the hit CW series Gossip Girl, which neither of us had ever before seen. Even though Mike, from MovieShotsLA, had been telling me for months that I would love the show, I steered clear of it as I had been under the incorrect assumption that it catered mostly to the teeny-bopper set. But, let me tell you, once we finally sat down to watch, it didn’t take long for my fiance and I to become totally and completely hooked!!! As much as it pains me to admit, there were literally whole weekends spent watching back to back episodes, the two of us never once leaving the couch! LOL Needless to say, I absolutely FELL IN LOVE with the show . . . and its locations. And, even though Blair Waldorf and Chuck Bass are the two GG characters I love the most, the locale I was most excited about stalking while in New York two weeks ago was the absolutely beautiful Neoclassical townhouse belonging to Nate Archibald (aka Chace Crawford) on the show. I found this location – and a few others – thanks to this awesome website. So, bright and early on our very first morning in NYC, I dragged my parents and my fiance out to finally do some Gossip Girl stalking! 🙂

Ironically enough, when we arrived at the townhouse, I almost didn’t recognize the place thanks to the fact that it was COMPLETELY covered in Halloween decorations. LOL But being that Halloween is my favorite holiday, I really didn’t mind. 🙂 The six story townhouse, which was built in 1910 and measures 11,296 square feet, is absolutely beautiful in person and it’s not very hard to see why producers chose to use it as the residence of the Archibald family – heirs to the Vanderbilt fortune – on the show.

As fate would have it, while we were taking photographs of the townhouse, the real life owner happened to walk outside, so I, of course, had to ask him a few questions about the filming. He was SUPER nice to us, but was very nonchalant about Gossip Girl, as if the filming of a hit television show on his property was an everyday occurrence, which I suppose, for him, it actually is. LOL Besides telling us that Chace Crawford is very nice in person, the owner also mentioned that the real interiors of his house are used for the filming of the interiors of the Archibald home, as well. So cool! 🙂

Even cooler is the fact that in the Season 2 episode of Gossip Girl entitled “There Might Be Blood”, the real life address of the home is shown as Nate’s return address on the letter he mails to Jenny! 🙂 Love it!

And thanks to fave book Manhattan on Film: Walking Tours of Hollywood’s Fabled Front Lot, I found out that the Archibald townhouse was also used as the office of therapist Susan Lowenstein (aka Barbra Streisand) in the 1991 movie The Prince of Tides.

And, from how it appears in the movie, I am pretty sure the real life interiors of the home were also used in the filming.

AND, according to this article, the King of Pop himself, Michael Jackson, rented this very same house for about six months back in 1999 for the bargain price of $75,000 a month while recording his “Invincible” album. SO COOL!

I honestly can’t recommend stalking Nate’s townhouse enough! It is such an amazing piece of property, that even if it wasn’t a filming location, I’m pretty sure I’d still be obsessed with it. 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Nate Archibald’s townhouse from Gossip Girl is located at 4 East 74th Street on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Located right around the corner at 25 East 73rd Street is Via Quadronno, my very favorite place to eat breakfast in all of New York. Their croissants are out of this world!

October 7, 2009October 4, 2009

Central Park’s Gapstow Bridge

One of my favorite places in all of New York is the tiny, little bridge known as Gapstow Bridge. Actually, I take that back. I think it’s far more accurate to say that the bridge is one of my favorite places in the entire world. 🙂 I am so enamored with it, in fact, that my entire family now refers to it as “Lindsay’s Bridge”. 🙂 Gapstow Bridge and its surroundings are so incredibly picturesque and romantic that I’ve taken about three hundred photographs of it on my various trips to the Big Apple and I go out of my way to visit it at least once each day while in Manhattan. It’s just one of those places that has the ability to calm me and warm me all at the same time. I just can’t get enough of it.

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Part of what makes Gapstow Bridge so beautiful is its surroundings. The bridge spans the northeast corner of the Central Park Pond and overlooks the beautiful Plaza Hotel to the South, Wollman Rink to the North, and the skyscrapers of the Upper West Side to the West. Believe me when I say that there is no other place like it in the entire world. I can’t be sure where Heaven is located, but I’m pretty certain it has a view of Gapstow Bridge. 🙂

The bridge was first built in 1874 by prominent New York architect Jacob Wrey Mould, who also designed Central Park’s Bethesda Fountain and Belvedere Castle. The bridge was originally built out of wood with intricate cast iron railings, but sadly, due to years of wear and tear, the entire thing had to be completely replaced in 1896. The Gapstow Bridge that stands today was designed by Howard & Caudwell, is made out of a sturdy, medium-grade rock known as schist, measures 12 feet tall, and has a span of 44 feet. It truly looks like something straight out of a movie. And, as a matter of fact, it is!

Because Gapstow Bridge is so incredibly picturesque and unique, it’s no surprise that it is one of the most photographed places in all of Manhattan and has, of course, appeared in countless movie and television productions – many more so than I could ever account for here. But just to name a few . . .

The bridge, of course, appeared in an episode of the quintessential New York series Sex and the City. In the Season 6 episode which was entitled “Let There Be Light”, Carrie and new love Aleksandr Petrovsky sit and eat chocolates on a Central Park bench with the Gapstow Bridge in the background.

Gapstow Bridge was also the site of Nate and Blair’s reunion kiss in the Season 2 episode of Gossip Girl entitled “Remains of the J”. In the episode, Dorota mentions that the bridge is Blair’s favorite spot in all of New York. I knew there was a reason why she was my favorite GG character. 🙂

In Home Alone 2: Lost In New York, the bridge is the place where Kevin McCallister first encounters the Pigeon Lady.

It is also the spot where, on Christmas morning, Kevin gives her one of his turtle dove ornaments and tells her “I won’t forget you. Trust me.” I swear no matter how many times I see that scene, it always manages to bring a tear to my eye.

In the movie The Devil Wears Prada, the Runway Magazine “Urban Jungle” photo shoot takes place right in front of Gapstow Bridge. In the first screen capture pictured above, the camera is situated just above my bridge, facing South.

While visiting New York last December, my family and I happened to run into the production crew for the television series Rescue Me filming on my bridge! Unfortunately, they were just wrapping up when we got there, so we didn’t get to see any of the actual filming or any of the show’s stars.

According to one of the crew members, though, the scene involved two guest stars having a conversation right in front of the Gapstow Bridge. The above photograph shows one of the crew members removing the actors’ “marks” off of the pavement and thus denotes the exact spot where filming took place.

The day we happened upon the filming was an EXTREMELY cold winter day in New York. If I remember correctly, temperatures were a record low for that year. The poor crew members were freezing their buns off, especially when they had to remove their gloves in order to fiddle with something on a piece of equipment. I felt so bad for them, as they all looked absolutely miserable. 🙁 But, even in the extreme cold, they still could NOT have been nicer and answered all of my silly questions about the filming.

It’s a sad truth that most movie locations look better onscreen than they do in real life. It’s the magic of the camera and all the set dressing, I suppose, or the bigger than life quality that being in a movie gives to something that’s behind it. Gapstow Bridge is one of the rare exceptions to that rule. It’s even prettier and more picturesque in person than I’ve ever seen it come across onscreen and I can’t recommend stalking it enough!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Gapstow Bridge is located in the Southeast corner of Central Park in Manhattan. The best way to reach it is by entering the Park at the corner of Central Park South and Fifth Avenue and following the path that runs along the perimeter of the Pond.

January 19, 2009February 14, 2009

The Campbell Apartment

One of my favorite bars in all of New York is called the Campbell Apartment and it is located right inside the most famous train depot of them all, Grand Central Station. I discovered the bar thanks to a guide book I was reading during my first trip to New York, back in December of 2005.

The Campbell Apartment was never actually an apartment at all, but rather the business office of millionaire railroad tycoon John William Campbell. In 1920, after retiring from his position as chairman of Credit Clearing House, Campbell became a member of the board of the New York Public Railroad and decided to find a suitable office for himself close to Grand Central Station. In 1923, Campbell found his perfect office – a 3,500 square foot single room located right inside Grand Central Station. The room measured 35 feet wide, 60 feet long, and had 25 foot high ceilings. Campbell hired New York architect Augustus N. Allen to renovate the large room into his dream Florentine-style office – and no expense was spared in doing so. The office became a sort of museum, housing a million dollar art collection which consisted of vases, statues, rare books, and antique rugs. One of those rugs covered the entire floor of the large room and was worth a reported $300,000. The office featured gorgeous leaded windows, dark wood-paneled walls, a large marble fireplace, 13th Century Italian furnishings, a huge steel safe, a grand piano and a pipe organ. Besides conducting his business affairs there, Campbell and his wife would often entertain in his office, as well, hosting large groups of friends for dinner, dancing, and cocktails.

Those parties perhaps served as the inspiration for Mark Grossich, current owner of the Campbell Apartment. Mark purchased the space in 1999, 42 years after John Campbell’s death. In the interim between Campbell’s death and Grossich’s purchase, the once grand space fell into serious disarray, at different times serving as a warehouse, a storage room, and even a jail! Mark had the foresite to restore the beautiful space to its former glory, hoping that Grand Central commuters of today would step into the grand office of yesterday to sip “cocktails from another era”. And indeed they did. Ten years later they are still coming – in droves. As I learned on my first visit to the Campbell Apartment, most nights it’s standing room only.

On that first visit back in 2005, I pulled what my boyfriend likes to call my “Sex and the City coup”. In the Season One episode of SATC entitled “The Power of Female Sex”, Carrie and the girls are repeatedly denied entrance to hot new New York eatery Balzac. After their final failed attempt to dine at the eatery, Carrie makes a pit stop at Balzac’s restroom. While there she runs into the hostess who denied them entry only moments before and who is currently in need of a tampon. Carrie provides it, and after her good deed, never again has trouble getting a table at Balzac. 🙂 Well, on our first trip to the Campbell Apartment, we put our names in with the hostess and were told it was going to be at least an hour wait. It was at that point that I noticed the hostess’ sparkling, two carat, princess cut, diamond engagement ring and proceeded to drool all over it. Ever since I was old enough to know what an engagement ring was, I have known that I want a princess cut one. I don’t care how big it is, or what “clarity” or “color”, but my boyfriend knows that if he wants me to say yes, he had better be proposing with a princess cut. 🙂 Well, the hostess LOVED that I loved her ring and even let me try the huge rock on. I was dying, it was so beautiful . . . and big! Well, not five minutes later we were seated at one of the best spots in the bar. 🙂 As my mom always says, the quickest way to a girl’s heart is to compliment her engagement ring. 🙂

I am actually very surprised that Campbell Apartment was not featured in an episode of Sex and the City – it seems like just the place Carrie and the girls would kick back a few cosmos. But the Campbell Apartment was featured in the pilot episode of the ever-popular teen soap Gossip Girl as the location of Serena and Nate’s illicit affair (pictured above). The bartender told us that the bar was also used in one of this season’s GG episodes, but he was unsure of which one. I guess he’s not a big Gossip Girl fan. 🙂 The bar has also been host to many movie wrap parties and industry get-togethers.

I can’t recommend stalking the Campbell Apartment enough! It is an absolutely fabulous place to grab a drink. Stepping through the doors is like stepping back in time to a more glamorous and fabulous era – the era of Old New York.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Campbell Apartment is located at 15 Vanderbilt Avenue, inside Grand Central Station, in New York. Baseball caps and tennis shoes are not permitted, so dress appropriately. You can visit the Campbell Apartment website here.

February 26, 2008November 8, 2010

The Poise Magazine Office from “13 Going On 30”

First, let me just say how happy I am that Britney apparently survived Starbucks three hour closure today! It’s truly a minor miracle!!

Anyway, on with the post . . .

This past December while on vacation in New York, I happened to walk by a building that I immediately recognized as the “Poise” offices from 13 Going On 30. I am not sure if it was the gold-framed revolving door that gave it away, or just the fact that I have seen 13 Going On 30 way too many times, but nevertheless I knew the building was used as Jenna Rink’s office the moment I spotted it. The “Poise” office building was actually built in 1931 and used to house Newsweek Magazine. It is now home to New York Magazine.

The store where Jenna shops in the movie and forgets her credit card is Henri Bendel and it is located just a few blocks away at 712 Fifth Avenue.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The “Poise” offices are located at 444 Madison Avenue in New York City, between 49th and 50th Streets. Just a half a block down from the office building is the New York Palace Hotel, where much of the TV show Gossip Girl is filmed. On the show, Serena lives at the Palace with her parents and often hangs out in the Gilt bar, which can be found just off the hotel’s courtyard.