New York attractions – Page 2

November 10, 2009November 10, 2009

Commerce Restaurant

One of the locations that I was most excited about stalking while in New York this past month was a little restaurant named Commerce which appeared in the very last episode of fave show Sex and the City. Well, truth be told, at the time SATC was filmed, the restaurant was known as Grange Hall, but that space closed its doors back in 2004, shortly after filming took place. A few years later, a nouveau American cuisine restaurant named Commerce opened in the same spot and it is that eatery that I set out to stalk last month. I found this location thanks to favorite stalking book New York: A Movie Lover’s Guide, which featured a brief blurb about the fact that Grange Hall was used in SATC’s series finale. Unfortunately, though, it failed to point out what specific scene took place there. So, being the anal stalker that I am, before leaving on my New York vacation, I made it my mission to figure out which part of the episode, which was entitled “An American Girl in Paris, Part Deux”, was filmed at the restaurant. And, let me tell you, I really had my work cut out for me on this one! Because several different eateries were actually featured in the finale, I found it virtually impossible to discern which one was Grange Hall. After watching the entire sixty minute finale all the way through, I came up completely empty-handed. But then an idea struck me! I thought that listening to executive producer Michael Patrick King’s DVD commentary about the finale might provide some insight. And, sure enough, it did!

As it turns out, Grange Hall was not actually portrayed as a New York restaurant in Sex and the City ,which explains why I had such a hard time locating it in the episode. In “An American Girl in Paris, Part Deux”, Grange Hall stood in for the Paris eatery where Carrie’s French fans threw her a party towards the end of the episode. It is after Carrie shows up late to this party, only to find that her new friends have already left, that she realizes that Paris isn’t turning out quite how she had expected.

I was shocked to discover that both the interior and the exterior of Grange Hall were used in the filming of “An American Girl in Paris”. I had incorrectly assumed that the exterior shown in the episode was actually that of a real French restaurant. In reality, though, producers dressed up the entire street in front of Grange Hall to make it look Parisian, even going so far as to add French street signs and French street lamps (as you can see in the above screen captures). Why they didn’t just film this particular scene at an actual restaurant in Paris is beyond me, especially being that the majority of the finale was actually shot on location there. But that’s Hollywood for you! 🙂

I am VERY happy to report that even though the Grange Hall space has gone through a succession of ownership changes since the SATC series finale was filmed, both the interior and the exterior of the restaurant still look EXACTLY the same as they did onscreen. 🙂 The decor, the booths and tables, and even the wood and glass partition that separates the entryway from the rest of the restaurant are all still very recognizable from the episode. YAY! I can’t tell you how happy I am that Commerce restaurant kept the Grange Hall interior intact for all of us Sex and the City fans to appreciate! 🙂

Commerce restaurant’s name was derived from the fact that it is located on Commerce Street in Greenwich Village. The building that houses the restaurant is actually quite famous in and of itself, aside from the fact that Sex and the City once filmed there. The property has been in existence since the early 1930’s, at which time it housed a speakeasy. In the 1940’s, the Blue Mill Tavern took over the space and quickly became something of a New York landmark. Blue Mill enjoyed a successful run for over half a century, serving such famed customers as Eugene O’Neill and Ethel and Julius Roseberg. In 1992, Blue Mill Tavern closed its doors and Grange Hall opened in its place. Grange Hall quickly became a celebrity hotspot, with regular patrons such as Brad Pitt, Jennifer Esposito, Gwyneth Paltrow, Liv Tyler (who hosted her 16th birthday party at the restaurant), and Bill Clinton. Grange Hall also appeared quite a few times on the silver screen. According to New York: A Movie Lover’s Guide, besides the SATC finale, the restaurant was also featured in the movies The Brothers McMullen and Anything Else and a commercial for a French cell phone company starring Martin Scorsese. In 2004, due to an increase in rent, Grange Hall was forced to close its doors and, after a few unsuccessful turnovers, Commerce restaurant was opened. Commerce is an absolutely adorable little place and I so, so, so wanted to grab a bite there during this year’s New York vacation, but unfortunately ran out of time. 🙁 It is DEFINITELY on my list of places to dine during next year’s trip, though. 🙂

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Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Commerce restaurant is located at 50 Commerce Street in New York’s Greenwich Village. You can visit their website here. You can read a great article about the former Grange Hall here.

November 6, 2009November 5, 2009

The “Big” Paddleball Court

Another day, another Big location. And, sadly, this is actually the last Big location that I have to blog about. 🙁 Well, from this year’s New York trip, anyway. Being that fellow stalker Owen recently tracked down both the MacMillan Toys headquarters and Tom Hank’s loft from the movie, it looks like I’ll have a few more Big locations to stalk during next year’s New York vacation. 🙂 But for now, the last and final Big locale that Owen, my fiancé, and I visited during our stalking day in Manhattan last month was the court where Josh (aka Tom Hanks) played a little game of paddleball against his MacMillan Toys co-worker Paul (aka John Heard) in the movie. In real life, that paddleball court, which Owen found thanks to fave stalking book The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations, is named Vesuvio Playground and it encompasses not only a paddleball court, but basketball courts, bocce ball courts, a sandbox, a mini pool, and a shower area, as well. When the park originally opened in 1929 it was called Thompson Playground and it consisted solely of a wading pool and a swing set and existed on a much smaller parcel of land than today’s .64 acres. In 1957, the City purchased an additional piece of land in order to expand the playground into what it is today. The park was then renamed Vesuvio Playground in honor of the nearby Vesuvio Bakery, which is owned and operated by longtime SoHo community leader Anthony Dapolito and his family.

In Big, Vesuvio Playground is the site of a very brief, but very memorable, scene in which the newly-adult Josh gets challenged to a paddleball duel by his douchebag of a co-worker, Paul. Because Paul is extremely jealous of his girlfriend Susan’s growing affection for Josh, he brings him to the paddleball court thinking he’ll teach him a lesson.

But Josh, who is a paddleball novice, ends up calling Paul out for cheating during the game which leads to a very juvenile – and absolutely hilarious – playground fist fight between the two. LOL LOL LOL

Unfortunately, even though it was mid-day, the paddleball court was absolutely JAM PACKED with children while we were stalking it, so we weren’t able to venture inside to take photographs. I mean, hello, shouldn’t kids be attending school during the middle of the day??? 😉 LOL I am happy to report, though, that the same pizza place which was visible in the background of the Big paddleball scene is still in business to this day, as you can see in the above screen captures and photographs. 🙂 So cool!!

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According to fave stalking book Manhattan on Film: Walking Tours of Hollywood’s Fabled Front Lot, Frankie (aka Nick Scotti) and Joey (aka Domenick Lombardozzi) play handball on the very same paddleball court in the 1997 movie Kiss Me Guido. And the playground was also featured in an episode of the NBC series Third Watch.

On a very sad side – During our stalking day, Owen, my fiancé, and I also tried to stalk Asti, the Italian eatery where Billy takes Josh for his birthday in Big. Unfortunately, though, that restaurant closed its doors on New Year’s Eve 1999, after 75 long years in operation. 🙁 Such a bummer! Asti, which was named after a town in Italy famous for its sparkling wine (LOVE IT!), was a New York institution ever since it first opened in 1925. Apparently, not only did such luminaries as Babe Ruth, Luciano Pavarotti, and Noel Coward frequent the restaurant during its heyday, but there was even an autographed photograph of Tom Hanks from the filming of Big displayed in the front window. Also LOVE IT! 🙂 Even the building which once housed Asti is famous – former President Chester A. Arthur once lived there! I can’t even begin to tell you how sad I am that this landmark restaurant is now gone. 🙁 Currently, in its place is another eatery – a steak restaurant named Strip House (pictured above). You can read more about Asti and its history here.

Big THANK YOU to Owen for loaning me his Big paddleball court pics to post here, as, for some reason, I did not take that many photographs of it.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Vesuvio Playground, aka the Big paddleball court, is located at 95 Thompson Street in New York’s SoHo area. The former Asti restaurant (now Strip House) was located at 13 East 12th Street in Greenwich Village.

October 29, 2009September 29, 2017

John Barrymore’s Apartment Building

Another Greenwich Village location that Owen, my fiancé, and I stalked during our recent whirlwind day in New York City was the Greek Revival townhouse where beleaguered actor John Barrymore – Drew’s grandfather – once lived. For three years, from 1917 to 1920, John rented the top floor penthouse of the building pictured above, which was originally constructed in 1839. Barrymore decorated his apartment, which he nicknamed the “Alchemist’s Corner”, with Gothic elements including gold wallpaper, fake wooden beams, ironwork accoutrements, and stained glass windows. His piece de resistance, however, was a garden oasis, which consisted of a cottage, a reflecting pool, and large trees, that he erected on the building’s roof. To build his little rooftop paradise a vast amount of soil had to be brought in – over 35 tons, actually – eventually causing the roof of the building to collapse! LOL Barrymore was nothing if not eccentric! And while his garden has long since been removed, the cottage Barrymore had built remains standing to this day. You can even see a photograph of it here. It was while living in this apartment that Barrymore carried out his illicit affair with married poet Blanche Thomas, who nicknamed herself Michael Strange – no that’s not a typo, she actually called herself Michael. Strange indeed! In 1920, the two married and moved to Westchester County. Two years later, on November 16, 1922, Barrymore began his legendary Broadway portrayal of Hamlet. This was to be his defining role and, in fact, he has even been called history’s “definitive Hamlet”.

My interest in the townhouse had little to do with the fact that John Barrymore had lived there, however, and more to do with something that occurred on the premises about seventy years later. In 1987, screenwriter/playwright Paul Rudnick, who later penned the screenplays for In & Out, Addams Family Values, and The Stepford Wives, moved into Barrymore’s former penthouse and became inspired to write a two-act comedic play entitled I Hate Hamlet. The play centers around a mediocre television actor named Andrew Rally who, like Rudnick, lives in John’s former dwelling. Rally has just landed the lead role in a Shakespeare in the Park production of Hamlet and is having a little trouble getting into character. One night the ghost of John Barrymore returns from the dead, in full Hamlet regalia no less, to help Andrew get a grasp on his new role. Of course, hilarity ensues when Andrew fails to live up to Barrymore’s ridiculously high expectations. I Hate Hamlet opened on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre on April 8, 1991 and starred none other than Evan Chandler, who later became famous for playing Charlotte’s husband Harry Goldenblatt on fave show Sex and the City. The show received mixed reviews and, thanks to actor Nicol Williamson, who played Barrymore in the production, was closed after a scant 88 night run. Apparently Williamson, who seems to be just about as eccentric as the real Barrymore, didn’t like to share the stage or the audience’s attention with his fellow actors. To remedy his problem he decided to actually stab Evan during one of the performances! Evan was harmed, but managed to walk off the stage, never to return to the show. Needless to say, I Hate Hamlet was shut down shortly thereafter. You can read a great article that Paul Rudnick wrote about the play’s Broadway run here. And, even though the show didn’t enjoy much success on Broadway, I Hate Hamlet has since become an acting class staple. I have seen monologues and scenes from it performed in pretty much every acting class I’ve ever attended in my entire life. You’d think I’d be tired of it by now, but surprisingly that has not been the case. Even though I’ve seen its most pertinent scenes and monologues performed countless times, I Hate Hamlet is still one of my very favorite plays. And even though by now I can probably recite the entire show by heart, I still laugh out loud every time I see it! 🙂 I absolutely LOVE I Hate Hamlet!

Surprisingly enough, though, I never knew of the play’s history until I read a passage about John Barrymore’s former abode in fave stalking book New York: A Movie Lover’s Guide. And, once I learned the story behind I Hate Hamlet, the play became all the more fascinating to me, if that’s at all possible. And, as you can probably imagine, once I heard that the setting of the comedy was in fact a real place and that John Barrymore and Paul Rudnick had actually lived there, I just HAD to stalk it!! 🙂 I cannot tell you how exciting it was for me to be able to see the townhouse in person, after countless years of loving the play that was inspired by it. I highly recommend both catching a performance of I Hate Hamlet if you ever have the opportunity and, of course, stalking the house where the story took place.

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Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: John Barrymore’s former apartment building is located at 132 West 4th Street in New York’s Greenwich Village area.

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 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 14, 2009October 13, 2009

FAO Schwarz

Every year while in Manhattan I drag my fiancé out to Fifth Avenue to stalk the most famous toy store in the entire world – the FAO Schwarz Flagship Store that was made famous in the 1988 movie Big. Because I am a total kid at heart, the shop honestly has to be one of my very favorite places in all of New York. Although, being that the store encompasses three stories and over 65,000 square feet of retail space, I should hardly be calling it a “shop”. It is more of an attraction, or, to be more precise, a sort of hands-on retail playground. Take my word for it when I say that there is no other place like it in the entire world. The first FAO Schwarz store, or Schwarz Toy Bazaar as it was originally called, was opened in 1862 in Baltimore, Maryland by a man named Frederick August Otto Schwarz (hence the FAO in the name) and sold only dolls. In 1870, Frederick moved his store to a location on Broadway in New York City and expanded his selling empire to include a wide selection of high-end toys. When Frederick passed away in 1911, his heirs inherited the company and continued to run it. In 1931, the store, which had become known as FAO Schwarz and had grown to become THE finest and most exclusive toy store in the entire world, moved to 745 Fifth Avenue, just across the street from its current location. But by 1963, Frederick’s heirs had grown tired of running the company and decided to sell it to Parent Magazine. After several subsequent owners, in 1985 the store was sold yet again to the joint partnership of Christiana Companies, businessman Peter L. Harris, and investment banker Peter C. Morse. Harris breathed new life into the company, which had faltered under the high ownership turnover, and in 1986 moved the flagship store to its current location in the former auto showroom of the General Motors Building on Fifth Avenue. It was at the grand opening of the new flagship store that the now famous 28-foot tall “Welcome to our World of Toys” singing clock was unveiled.   And it was only two years later that the store would be immortalized by a piano playing Tom Hanks in the 1988 comedy Big. Throughout the ‘90s, the store saw several different ownerships yet again and, under the helm of the Rite Start Company, began to severely falter. In 2003, FAO filed for bankruptcy, not once, but twice, and shuttered eighteen of its twenty-two stores. And on January 26th, 2004, the unthinkable happened – the store’s Fifth Avenue location closed its doors. For the next ten months, the new owners, D.E. Shaw Laminar Portfolios, regrouped, revamped and remodeled the floundering company, and on the day before Thanksgiving 2004, the flagship store re-opened to much fanfare. It has been extremely successful ever since.

And it truly is a wonder to see! The famous singing clock no longer greets customers at the front entrance, but there is now a candy shop, two treehouses, a view of Central Park and the Plaza, an on-call magician, life size Lego displays, and – my favorite area – a Newborn Nursery (pictured above), where kids can “adopt” amazingly realistic looking baby dolls for the bargain price of $80.

And I have to say that, for some odd reason, I absolutely LOVE those Newborn Nursery dolls. Well, truth be told, I actually have a proclivity for any kind of doll, but some of my favorites have to be the FAO Schwarz Newborns. I realize I am a grown woman, but every single time I visit New York, I just HAVE to go to the Newborn Nursery and take a picture with one of the dolls. I must have over ten different photographs pretty much identical to the one pictured above in my collection. LOL I know, I know, I am a total dork!

Believe me, the irony was not lost on me as I posed for the above photograph holding a baby doll . . . on my THIRTIETH birthday. Not kidding. 🙂

Even though FAO Schwarz has since changed ownership several times and was even closed for the better part of 2004, I am happy to report that it is still, for the most part, recognizable from Big.

For those who have never seen the movie, it was at FAO that the now infamous piano playing scene starring Tom Hanks and his boss, Robert Loggia, took place. I sooooo LOVE that scene! “Chopsticks!” 🙂 I can still remember sitting in the movie theatre at eleven years old, watching that scene for the very first time and being absolutely mesmerized over not only the piano dance, but also the toy store in general. My eleven year old mind could not comprehend that a place like that really existed!   🙂

As you can see in the above screen capture, at the time Big was filmed, the foot piano was located on the store’s main floor, near the front door. That area, which is called the Great Hall, now houses FAO’s massive collection of stuffed animals.

Today the Big piano is located towards the back of the store’s second level. And every hour, FAO puts on a Big style piano show, where store employees dance on the keyboard and play games like “Name That Tune” with the audience. So cool! 🙂

And you can even purchase your very own Big piano for the bargain price of . . . $250,000! No, that’s not a typ0 – the darn thing actually costs $250,000!!!!! LOL LOL LOL If I had that kind of money lying around, you can bet I wouldn’t be spending it on a toy piano!

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FAO Schwarz was also featured at the end of 1995’s Mighty Aphrodite as the location where Woody Allen runs into his former mistress, played by Mira Sorvino. The toy store was also featured in the movies For Love Or Money, Big Business, Godspell: A Musical Based on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew and the Amy Grant documentary entitled Building the House of Love.

Besides being a filming location, FAO Schwarz is also quite a celebrity magnet. On December 15, 2005, Tom Cruise hosted then-girlfriend Katie Holmes’ 25th birthday party at the store after hours.   He even had the place stocked with balloons and cupcakes from Katie’s favorite bakery, Billy’s Bakery, for the occasion. Other celebs who have been spotted at the legendary toy store include Ashley Simpson, Bindi Irwin (daughter of Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin), Kate Gosselin, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Kelly Ripa, Britney Spears, Posh Spice, Heidi Klum, Calista Flockhart, Bernadette Peters, Cindy Crawford, Isla Fisher, Brooke Shields, and Conan O’Brien.

I honestly can’t recommend stalking the FAO Schwarz Flagship Store enough! The place certainly has the ability to bring out the kid in everyone, whether you are 9 or 99! 🙂 But if you aren’t planning a trip to the Big Apple anytime soon, you can also cyber-stalk the store from the comfort of your own home here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The FAO Schwarz Flagship Store is located at 767 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

October 9, 2009October 7, 2009

Rye Playland

Another location that fellow stalker Owen visited a few weeks back while spending the day in Rye, New York was the amusement park featured at the very end of the 1988 Tom Hanks movie Big. Rye Playland, which is also called Playland Amusement Park or just simply Playland and is run by Westchester County, New York, is the only government-owned and operated amusement park in the entire United States. In the early 1900s, Westchester County Park Association purchased two beachside theme parks after local citizens became upset over the unruly patrons fraternizing there. The Association tore down the existing parks and built Rye Playland in their place. The Art Deco style park opened on May 26, 1928 after a scant six months of construction. The new park featured an ice skating rink, a boardwalk, a fine dining restaurant, a swimming pool, two beaches, and numerous rides, including the Grand Carousel, which was built by Mangels-Carmel in 1915. In 1987, Playland was declared a National Historic Landmark and it is still in operation to this day, looking much the same as it did when it first opened over 81 years ago.

Due to its quaint, beachside charm, movie producers have made much use of Playland over the years. It is at the Rye amusement park that Tom Hanks finally locates the elusive Zoltar machine and makes his wish to be a kid again in fave movie Big. As you can see in the above screen capture and photograph, the entrance to the park looks a bit different today than it did in 1988 when Big was filmed. The two white pillars flanking the front gates have long since been removed, as has the pine tree that used to stand in the center island.

Also, at the time the movie was filmed, the large fountain at the front of the park was not in operation. That fountain was in full swing, though, when Owen visited Playland a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, due to all of the spouting water, he couldn’t match up his photograph perfectly to the screen shot, but the two pictures you see above were taken from the exact same vantage point.

Most of the scene from Big took place on Playland’s curved boardwalk, which is located just around the corner from the park’s main entrance and, which, amazingly enough, still looks almost exactly the same today as it did twenty-one years ago when the movie was filmed.

The only thing missing, of course, is the Zoltar machine. 🙁 But notice how the payphone in the above photograph is still in the EXACT same place that it was when the movie was filmed!!

Owen, of course, wasn’t expecting to find a magic fortune telling machine on the pier during his stalk, so imagine his surprise when he discovered that a Pepsi machine was standing just a few feet to the left of where Zoltar was situated in the movie.

So, of course, he just HAD to pretend to kick the machine, like Tom Hanks did in the movie. LOVE IT! 🙂

Rye Playland also showed up in Fatal Attraction, as the spot where Glenn Close took Michael Douglas’ daughter for the day after kidnapping her from school. In the movie, the two are shown riding Playland’s iconic Dragon Coaster, which was built in 1929 and was designed by Frederick A. Church. The Dragon Coaster is 3,400 feet long, rises to 85 feet at its highest point, and is one of only about a hundred wooden roller coasters still in operation in the United States.

Mariah Carey also rode the Dragon Coaster in the 1995 video for her song “Fantasy”, which was filmed in its entirety on location at Playland. The video also made use of the park’s boardwalk and parking lot area.

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Other productions filmed at Playland include Pieta, Sweet and Lowdown, Tenderness, The Muppets Take Manhattan and several episodes of BET Now.

A big THANK YOU to Owen for stalking this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Rye Playland is located at the end of Playland Parkway in Rye, New York. You can visit their website here. Park admission fees range between $20 to $30, but you can access the boardwalk area, where Big was filmed, for free. Parking costs an average of $5, depending on the day. The boardwalk area is located just around the corner from the park’s main entrance. The Who’s the Boss? house is located just a mile North of Playland at 13 Onondaga Street, also in Rye.

October 8, 2009October 7, 2009

The Who’s the Boss House

One location that I will, sadly, not be able to stalk during this year’s New York vacation for the simple fact that it is located too far from the island of Manhattan is the home belonging to the Bower Family in the 1984 television sitcom Who’s the Boss? But thankfully, fellow stalker Owen visited this location a few weeks back and was kind enough to allow me to share his story and his photographs on my blog. And while I usually don’t like to blog about locations that I haven’t personally stalked myself, this one was honestly just too good to pass up!! Hopefully someday I will be able to visit the Who’s the Boss house in person, but until then, a big THANK YOU goes out to Owen for letting me stalk vicariously through him! 🙂

On Who’s the Boss?, the house where Angela, Tony, Jonathan, Samantha, and Mona live is supposedly located at 3344 Oak Hills Drive in the New England town of Fairfield, Connecticut. In reality, though, the house used in the opening credits and for establishing shots throughout the series eight year run is actually located about thirty miles away from Fairfield, in Rye, New York. It’s quite ironic that a real Fairfield house wasn’t used in the series, being that according to this 1989 Fairfield Citizen-News article, Who’s the Boss? producers chose to set their show in the New England town after “falling in love with” its “quaint charm and picturesque scenery”. But, for some odd reason, when scouting locations for the Bower Family residence, producers looked not to Fairfield, but to Westchester County, New York. Even more ironic to me is the fact that while the house was featured in the opening credits of each week’s show, for some reason, only a very small portion of it was ever shown, as you can see in the above screen capture. It’s such a pretty house that I am really surprised more of it wasn’t shown on the series.

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And in a Who’s The Boss side note – for the better part of a year I attended an acting class with Jonathan Halyalkar, who played the character of “Billy” in 21 episodes of the show’s 7th Season. 🙂 I kept mentioning how familiar Jonathan looked when someone finally told me about his childhood acting stint on Who’s the Boss?, which I thought was just about the coolest thing ever! So, I, of course, had to ask him all about it. Jonathan, who was an insanely talented triple threat (as those who can sing, dance, and act are often called) and an all around nice guy, told me all sorts of stories about his time on the show and was even a good sport about the fact that most people say the series “jumped the shark” when they cast him. LOL Jonathan told me to Google the terms “Who’s the Boss” and “jump the shark” and that I’d see his name pop up all over the place. Too funny. Sadly, in all our time together in acting class I somehow never thought to get a photograph with him. 🙁

Big THANK YOU to Owen for not only finding this location, but for stalking it as well. 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Who’s the Boss? house is located in Westchester County at 13 Onandaga Street in Rye, New York.