Sleepless in Seattle – IAMNOTASTALKER

July 24, 2017July 29, 2017

Hollywood Diner from “Sleepless in Seattle”

Another day, another diner from a Meg Ryan movie! Unlike the Port Café, the Wilmington, California eatery that portrayed East Coast establishments in both When Harry Met Sally . . . and A Few Good Men, today’s locale can actually be found close to the Atlantic – though its name would have you believe otherwise. I’m talking about the Hollywood Diner in downtown Baltimore, which played the Capital Diner in the 1993 romcom Sleepless in Seattle. To discuss the restaurant’s history, though, we have to go back to the filming of a much earlier movie, 1982’s Diner.

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When writer/director Barry Levinson started pre-production on his semi-autobiographical coming-of-age drama Diner, set in 1959 Baltimore, he sought out to find a coffee shop similar to the one he hung out in during his youth for the shoot. His former stomping ground, the Hilltop Diner, which largely inspired his story, had been turned into a liquor store years prior, so filming there was not a possibility. After failed negotiations with the owners of the Double T Diner in Catonsville, Maryland, Levinson wound up coming across a vacant plot of land in Charm City’s Canton neighborhood that overlooked the famed Domino Sugars sign and thought it would make the perfect setting for his movie. All he needed was a diner. So he headed to a diner graveyard in New Jersey and quickly set his sights on a streamlined silver structure that formerly served as Long Island’s Westbury Grill. He leased the 1954 café from the graveyard, transported it to the plot of land in Canton, and proceeded to shoot Diner there, dubbing the fictional eatery “Fells Point Diner.”

Both the interior and exterior of the diner were used extensively in the shoot. (And yes, that’s a very young Kevin Bacon in the second screen capture below. <3)

Though some sources claim that Bendix Diner in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey was used for the filming of Diner’s interior scenes, that information is incorrect. The establishment does bear a considerable resemblance to the café where Eddie Simmons (Steve Guttenberg), Shrevie Schreiber (Daniel Stern), Boogie Sheftell (Mickey Rourke), Timothy Fenwick Jr. (Bacon), and Modell (Paul Reiser) hung out in the flick, but upon close inspection, it is obvious that the two are not one and the same.

When filming on Diner wrapped, the 48-foot by 17-foot restaurant was shipped back to the diner graveyard in New Jersey, which would have been the end of the story had then Baltimore mayor William Donald Schaefer not stepped in. Shortly after the movie premiered in early 1982, Schaefer implored local citizens to help return the structure to Charm City, putting purchase and transport of the eatery on his civil “wish list.” WBAL Radio heeded his cry, bought the restaurant from the graveyard and gifted it to Baltimore. It was transferred to its new home at 400 East Saratoga Street in the heart of downtown in January 1984. At the time, the diner lacked a bathroom and a kitchen, but locals donated time and money to spruce up the structure and transform it back into a functional restaurant. It opened later that year as The Kids’ Diner. Run by city schools and the mayor’s office, the site served as both an eatery and a vocational training center for area students.

Plagued by financial woes from the start, the restaurant was taken over by the Chesapeake Foundation for Human Development in 1991 and renamed “Hollywood Diner.”

The foundation couldn’t quell the café’s money problems, though, and, after undergoing a series of different management organizations and restaurant iterations, the site finally shuttered in 2012. Though there were plans to turn the property into a food truck park, using the interior of the diner for seating, it does not appear that the project ever took of.

Despite the longtime closure, the diner still stands intact today, thankfully.

I was floored when I walked up to the structure and saw that the interior was visible through the front windows!

At the beginning of Sleepless in Seattle, Annie Reed (Meg Ryan) stops for tea at the diner while on a Christmas Eve road trip to her fiancé’s parents’ house.

It is amazing to me how little the restaurant has changed since filming took place over 24 years ago.

Hollywood Diner has appeared in several productions over the years. In fact, Barry Levinson has quite a soft spot for the place, having utilized it in two of his other movies. In 1987’s Tin Men, the restaurant serves as Ernest Tilley’s (Danny DeVito) regular breakfast joint.

And Van Kurtzman (Adrien Brody) also hangs out there in Levinson’s 1999 drama Liberty Heights.

The director even named the eatery “Fells Point Diner” in the movie, as a nod to his 1982 film.

Though some websites state that the diner also appears in the 1990 Levinson-directed drama Avalon, in the scene in which Michael Kaye (Elijah Wood) watches as a restaurant is dropped into place on a vacant lot, that information is incorrect. As you can see below, the eatery in Avalon looks nothing like the Hollywood Diner (not only do the windows not match, but neither does the general shape of the structure). Not to mention that by the time Avalon was shot, The Kids’ Diner had already been installed at its downtown location and in full operation for over six years.

In the Season 2 episode of The Wire titled “Duck and Cover,” which aired in 2003, a drunken Detective James “Jimmy” McNulty (Dominic West) heads to the Hollywood Diner for coffee and winds up going home with his waitress.

Hollywood Diner provided the setting for the 2017 short film The Dark of Night, directed by Robin Wright.

The restaurant also reportedly appeared in an episode of Homicide: Life on the Street, though I am unsure of which episode.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Hollywood Diner, aka Capital Diner from Sleepless in Seattle, is located at 400 East Saratoga Street in Baltimore. The restaurant is currently closed.

February 27, 2017February 23, 2017

Baltimore’s Washington Monument from “Sleepless in Seattle”

Most people know about the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., but what few realize is that there is another memorial honoring America’s first president located nearby and that it actually predates the District one. It is a filming location, to boot – from Sleepless in Seattle, one of my favorite movies, no less! So I just had to do some stalking of it while I was back east last September.

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The original Washington Monument, which was constructed from 1815 to 1829 and was the first public memorial to pay homage to George Washington, stands about forty miles outside of the nation’s capital in Baltimore, Maryland’s Mount Vernon neighborhood. The structure was designed by architect Robert Mills, who also designed its D.C. counterpart, though that one did not begin to take shape until 1848 and was not completed for another 37 years after that.

Manufactured out of marble from three local quarries, the monument stands at 178 feet, 8 inches tall.

The focal point of the memorial is a towering Doric column positioned at the center of a rectangular base. Inside of the base is an exhibit about the monument and its surrounding neighborhood. Unfortunately, I had a bit of a stalking fail with this particular location because until I started doing researching for this post, I was unaware that visitors could not only venture inside the structure, but to the very top of it! The tower’s apex apparently provides some fabulous views of the city, so I am really disappointed the Grim Cheaper and I did not head inside.

Affixed to the exterior of the monument’s base are eight bronze captions denoting important events in Washington’s life.

And holding court at the top is a sculpture designed by Italian artist Enrico Causici that represents the moment when Washington resigned as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army on December 23rd, 1783. Why did Causici choose to immortalize that particular occasion? As History.com explains, “Washington’s willingness to return to civilian life was an essential element in the transformation of the War for Independence into a true revolution. During the war, Congress had granted Washington powers equivalent to those of a dictator and he could have easily taken solitary control of the new nation. Indeed, some political factions wanted Washington to become the new nation’s king. His modesty in declining the offer and resigning his military post at the end of the war fortified the republican foundations of the new nation.”

The detailing of the statue cannot be seen from ground level, which is quite possibly a good thing. The Baltimore Business Journal’s Kevin Litten got a close-up view of the piece in 2014, while the monument was undergoing a $5.5-million, 19-month restoration, and as he humorously reported, Causici’s rendering of the nation’s first president depicts him with “a wide, googly-eyed stare” that “looks a lot more like the late actor Jack Elam than the father of our country.” Who is Jack Elam, you ask? Litten explains, “Elam was known both for his frequent depiction of evil characters in western films, and for having what the New York Times called a ‘leer, bulging eye’ that ‘conveyed villainy as surely as [Jimmy] Durante’s nose suggested humor.’” I mean, try to look at this photo and not laugh. I’m literally in hysterics as I write this.

In 1917, it was decided that a statue of Marquis de Lafayette, the French aristocrat who fought alongside Washington during the Revolutionary War, would be added to the site. Sculptor Andrew O’Connor was commissioned to create the instillation and architect Thomas Hastings was enlisted to re-design the area surrounding the Washington Monument to better suit the new piece. The statue was eventually dedicated in 1924.

Surrounding the monument are four gorgeously manicured park-like squares.

Lined with trees, the squares feature fountains, shaded paths, and benches and chairs where visitors can enjoy quiet respite from the bustle of Baltimore.

It truly is a gorgeous site and fitting homage to the father of this great nation.

Towards the beginning of Sleepless in Seattle, Annie Reed (Meg Ryan) and her BFF Becky (Rosie O’Donnell) pass by the Washington Monument on their way to have lunch at the Women’s Exchange, which I blogged about last week.

In the scene, the two ladies are shown walking from the east side of the monument to the south side, past the Marquis de Lafayette statue.

Baltimore’s Washington Monument has popped up in a few other productions over the years.

In the 1979 thriller . . . And Justice for All, Arthur Kirkland (Al Pacino) takes a spontaneous jog around the monument and Marquis de Lafayette statue.

Robert Clayton Dean (Will Smith) and Rachel F. Banks (Lisa Bonet) have a clandestine meet-up at the Washington Monument in 1998’s Enemy of the State.

That same year, the memorial was featured briefly in the opening scene of the John Waters comedy Pecker as the spot where Pecker (Edward Furlong) caught a bus.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Washington Monument, from Sleepless in Seattle, is located at 699 Washington Place in Baltimore. Several other filming locations can be found in the same vicinity, including the Women’s Exchange, also from Sleepless in Seattle, at 333 North Charles Street; the George Peabody Library, again from Sleepless, at 17 East Mount Vernon Place; Terry Lambert’s (Steve Guttenberg) apartment from The Bedroom Window at 12 East Mount Vernon Place; and The Helmund from He’s Just Not That Into You at 806 North Charles Street.

February 17, 2017February 15, 2017

The Women’s Exchange from “Sleepless in Seattle”

Last year, I had incredible luck getting access to filming locations typically closed to the public. While visiting New York in April, I was granted tours of three non-accessible places that I literally would have given my eye teeth to see. Thankfully, none of my friendly tour guides collected on that offer. (And yes, I will be blogging about those sites soon.) One spot I was not as fortunate with was the tea room at the Women’s Exchange in Baltimore, which was featured briefly in Sleepless in Seattle. I was thrilled to come across information about the place while researching Charm City filming locales prior to my September trip back east, and was even more thrilled to discover that the space, though closed, was still in existence and used as a special events venue. While I contacted the Women’s Exchange a few months prior to my visit to see if a tour might be arranged, unfortunately the staff was not able to make that happen. But I still ventured over to stalk the outside of it while in town.

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The Women’s Exchange was established in 1880 as a place where Civil War widows and impoverished females could make money outside of the workplace by selling handmade goods. The non-profit organization, initially called the Women’s Industrial Exchange, was founded by G. Harmon Brown and originally operated out of her private residence. The program quickly proved successful, was incorporated in 1882, and moved to its current home, a five-story former boarding house on Charles Street that was constructed in 1815, five years later.

The organization purchased the picturesque property, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, in 1889.

In 1900, a consignment boutique was opened on the premises and the building’s stately dining hall was transformed into a tea room.

The eatery, which featured white and black checkered flooring, a tall fireplace, and red leather booths, became a popular spot for society women, as well as D.C. politicians, to “lunch.” Amazingly, it remained in operation until 2002 (more than a century!), at which point it was shuttered due to a decline in patronage.

Various restaurants were opened in the tea room space by outside companies in the ensuing years, but, sadly, none took.

Woman’s Industrial Kitchen, which debuted in 2011, was the last eatery to operate in the historic venue, but it was shuttered in 2014 and the site has remained closed, outside of hosting special events, ever since.

Closure of the Women’s Exchange consignment and gift store occurred shortly thereafter and, although a pop-up shop was opened on the premises during the holiday season in 2015, for the most part the locale has remained dark and its future currently appears uncertain. You can see some photographs of the tea room over the years here and here.

In Sleepless in Seattle, Annie Reed (Meg Ryan) and Becky (Rosie O’Donnell) grab lunch at the Women’s Exchange tea room. While there, Becky calls Annie out on her crush on the “Sleepless in Seattle” radio caller.

According to a 2012 The Baltimore Sun article, Sleepless director Nora Ephron became a huge fan of the Exchange after visiting it while scouting locations for the movie, so much so that she wound up eating lunch on the premises daily during the shoot. Ephron had a particular affinity for the tea room’s orange cupcakes and had them delivered by the dozen to the set on a regular basis for the cast and crew to enjoy. She was most taken by the place’s historic aesthetic, though, telling a reporter in 1992 that “It was out of time,” which fit perfectly with her vision of creating an enduring love story. She explained, “We had to do a movie about love that was also about movies about love that I want people to watch for 20 years. I don’t want them to say, ‘Oh, that was made in ’93.’” In my opinion, she succeeded. Sleepless in Seattle is just as touching and poignant today as it was when it first premiered 24 years ago. (Fun fact – Ephron cast longtime Exchange waitress Marguerite Schertle as Annie and Becky’s server in Sleepless. When the director asked her to say a few lines and to “pat” Annie and Becky in the scene, Schertle refused, saying, “Look, just let me do it my way.” She’d been an employee of the tea room for 45 years by that time, after all, and knew how to play the part. That’s her below in the blue uniform, which was her actual work attire.)

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Women’s Exchange, from Sleepless in Seattle, is located at 333 North Charles Street in Baltimore. You can visit the exchange’s official website here. The property, including the tea room and the store, is currently closed to the public.

November 21, 2016November 20, 2016

Annie’s House from “Sleepless in Seattle”

We all have those movies – the ones that affected us so much upon first viewing, they left a lasting imprint on our hearts. Sleepless in Seattle is one such movie for me. As I mentioned in this 2010 post about the houseboat from the 1993 romcom, I still remember exactly where I was the first time I saw it and have my ticket stub tucked away in a box. The film had an immediate visceral effect on me – and still does to this day. So when I found out that the Grim Cheaper and I were heading to Baltimore, where Sleepless was partially filmed, this past September, I started putting together a list of must-see locales from the movie, namely the gorgeous brick townhome where Annie Reed (Meg Ryan) and her fiancé, Walter (Bill Pullman), lived.

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Annie’s residence has been well-documented online for years, so I did not have to do any sleuthing to hunt it down.

Miraculously, the dwelling looks almost exactly the same today as it did 23 years ago when Sleepless in Seattle was filmed.

Even the duck boot scraper visible in the bottom right of the above screen capture is still intact.

Annie’s house was featured several times throughout Sleepless in Seattle.

In real life, the three-story property, which was originally built in 1900, houses 1,995 square feet of space and 3.5 baths.

Though I do believe the structure was a private residence at one point, today it serves as an office, housing the Baltimore branch of Captel, a fundraising and membership development company.

Only the exterior of the site was used in Sleepless in Seattle. While I always assumed that the charming interior of Annie’s home was a set, my friend/fellow stalker David, who is a denizen of the Pacific Northwest, has heard that interiors were shot at an actual residence in West Seattle. So the jury’s still out on that one.

If interiors were shot at a real place, what I wouldn’t give to track it down!

The pier just outside of Annie’s home was also used in the filming.

In one particularly memorable scene (well, to me, anyway), Annie walks to the end of the pier and sits on a bench located there, while Sam Baldwin (Tom Hanks) does the exact same thing more than 2,000 miles away at a dock in Seattle. (As you can see in my images above and below, a car commercial was being shot on the pier the day we were there! Apparently, Broadway Pier, as it is known, is used for filming quite often.)

Unfortunately, the bench where Annie sat in the scene was just a prop.

But that didn’t stop me from posing for a photo there. Smile

Broadway Pier was also used very briefly in the “ . . . if she’s not sleeping with you” vignette from He’s Just Not That Into You. The building visible in the background of the scene has been remodeled in recent years and looks quite a bit different today than it did in 2009 when HJNTIY was shot, so I’m using a comparison image below from Google Street View that was taken in 2011.

Broadway Square, which is located just about one hundred feet north of Annie’s house, was also featured in He’s Just Not That Into You, as the spot where Connor (Kevin Connolly) called Mary (Drew Barrymore) to discuss the placement of his real estate ads. In the scene, Connor sat at the southern end of Broadway Square, just east of Admiral Fell Inn.

I recently discovered a couple of other He’s Just Not That Into You locales in the same vicinity. Duda’s Tavern, which is located about 500 feet west of Annie’s house at 1600 Thames Street, served as the exterior of City Supper Club, the bar owned by Alex (Justin Long) in the flick.

And The Waterfront Hotel, located about 300 feet east of Annie’s house at 1710 Thames Street, masked as the exterior of The Huntsman’s Den, where Alex gave Gigi (Ginnifer Goodwin) some pointers on reading body language.

The entire area around Annie’s house is absolutely adorable.

Unfortunately, we did not get to spend a lot of time there, but I found myself wishing we had stayed at one of the hotels lining the main drag as there are so many shops and restaurants in the cobblestoned vicinity.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Annie’s house from Sleepless in Seattle is located at 904 South Broadway in Baltimore’s Fells Point neighborhood. The spot where Connor sat in He’s Just Not That Into You can be found about one hundred feet north at Broadway Square, just east of the Admiral Fell Inn at 888 Broadway. Duda’s Tavern, which was used as the exterior of City Supper Club in HJNTIY, is located one block west of Broadway Square at 1600 Thames Street. And The Waterfront Hotel, which masked as the exterior of The Huntsman’s Den in HJNTIY, is located one block east at 1710 Thames Street.

August 16, 2010August 16, 2010

The Athenian Inn from “Sleepless in Seattle”

Another location at the very top of my Must-Stalk-While-in-the-Pacific-Northwest list was the Athenian Inn Seafood Restaurant and Bar, which made a brief, but quite memorable appearance in the 1993 romantic comedy Sleepless in Seattle. I had been absolutely dying to stalk the restaurant for what seemed like years for a couple of reasons. One, because as I’ve mentioned before, Sleepless has long been one of my very favorite movies. And two, because fellow stalker Kerry had previously visited the place and told me that there were numerous photographs of the filming displayed on the restaurant’s walls. As you can imagine, I could NOT wait to see those photographs for myself! So, after grabbing a coffee at the very first Starbucks store, which I blogged about a couple of weeks ago, Kerry, her husband Jim, the Grim Cheaper, and I all headed across the street to Pike Place Market, where the Athenian Inn has been located for over a century. Yes, you read that right! The Athenian Inn, which was founded by the three Pappadakis brothers, who hailed from Greece – hence the “Athenian” in the name – first opened over one hundred years ago, in 1909. Originally a bakery/candy shop/luncheonette, the establishment later transformed into a bar (in 1933, it was one of the first places in Seattle to be granted a liquor license to serve wine and beer) and then eventually into a full-blown restaurant. In 1964, the Inn was purchased by Bob and Louise Cromwell, who added a lounge and a balcony to the premises, and although Bob passed away in 2002, Louise still owns and manages the place to this day. You can read a more comprehensive history of the restaurant here.

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In Sleepless in Seattle, the Athenian Inn was the restaurant where Sam Baldwin (aka Tom Hanks) and his friend Jay (aka Rob Reiner) discussed dating in the ‘90s, “cute butts”, and the mystery that is tiramisu. And even though the scene that was filmed there took up only one minute and thirty-eight seconds of screen time, it made such an impact on the movie-going public that seventeen years later the place is STILL one of Seattle’s top tourist attractions! Isn’t that amazing?!?! Less than two minutes of screen time in a movie that is almost two decades old and the restaurant is still drawing crowds! INCREDIBLE! It reminds me of what happened with Magnolia Bakery in New York – a cupcakery that appeared in a one minute and seventeen second scene from an episode of Sex and the City which first aired over a decade ago, and fans are STILL lining up around the block to catch a glimpse of the place. I think it is so incredibly cool when a movie or television show creates such a monumental impact like that! But I digress.

The Sleepless in Seattle scene that was filmed at the Athenian Inn was shot at the northwest corner of the restaurant’s counter, right near the main entrance.

Not that I really need to explain that here, though, because the restaurant actually has plaques which denote the exact location where filming took place. How incredibly cool is that???? Oh, how I wish EVERY filming location would honor its cinematic history by doing something similar. LOVE IT!!! LOVE IT!!! LOVE IT!!!

And fellow stalker Kerry and I, of course, just had to recreate the Sleepless scene while we were there!

Thankfully, little has changed at the Athenian Inn in the more than 17 years since Sleepless was filmed there and the place looks pretty much EXACTLY the same today as it did then.

In fact, from what I’ve been able to discern, it seems that not much has been changed in the more than hundred years since the historic restaurant first opened. The neon sign that was first hung over the establishment’s front door by the Pappadakis brothers in 1933 is still hanging in the very same spot to this day! So darn cool!

I honestly cannot recommend stalking the Athenian Inn enough! The food was great, the prices reasonable, the views of Elliot Bay amazing, and the staff super friendly. Not to mention the many nods to the restaurant’s cinematic history which are proudly displayed on the walls. 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Athenian Inn from Sleepless in Seattle is located at 1517 Pike Place, inside Pike Place Market, in Seattle. You can visit the restaurant’s official website here. In Sleepless, Tom Hanks and Rob Reiner sat at the northwest corner of the restaurant’s counter.

August 10, 2010July 18, 2010

Jessica’s House from “Sleepless in Seattle”

One of the locations that I was most excited about stalking while visiting Seattle this past May was the home where Jonah Baldwin’s (aka Ross Malinger’s) best friend Jessica (aka Gaby Hoffman) lived in fave movie Sleepless in Seattle. Fellow stalker David, who I had the pleasure of meeting and doing some stalking with during my brief three-day vacation, managed to track down Jessica’s house just about a week before I headed up to the Pacific Northwest. He found the locale after posting an inquiry on this area filming locations thread on the West Seattle Blog website. David had spent quite a bit of time trying to find the house on his own without much luck, so thankfully the West Seattle Blog readers offered to lend a hand and through some amazing detective work came up with the right address. YAY! So, I immediately put the home high up on my must-stalk-while-in-Seattle-list and could NOT have been more excited about seeing it!

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The exterior of Jessica’s house was actually only featured in one very brief scene in Sleepless in Seattle in which BFF’s Jonah and Jessica mail a letter to Annie Reed (aka Meg Ryan) which they have written on behalf of Jonah’s father, Sam Baldwin (aka Tom Hanks). After putting the forged letter in Jessica’s mailbox, the two sit on her front porch and wait for the mailman to come pick it up.

Even though the home appeared only once, and very briefly at that, I was still absolutely floored over seeing it in person because, as I’ve mentioned before, Sleepless in Seattle is one of my very favorite movies of all time. And I am happy to report that Jessica’s house still looks very much the same today as to how it appeared onscreen in Sleepless, which is pretty darn amazing being that filming took place over 17 years ago! Sadly, though, the mailbox where Jessica and Jonah mailed Annie’s letter is not there in real life. I am fairly certain that it was never truly a part of the house, but was a prop that was brought in solely for the filming. 🙁 So sad! Also missing, of course, was Jessica’s mom’s “Four Winds” travel agency sign that was displayed on the home’s front porch in the movie.

I am fairly certain that the actual interior of the house was used in the filming, as well.

According to a comment posted by a West Seattle Blog reader named “westseattledood”, a home located just a few doors down from Jessica’s stood in for the Chicago-area residence where Sam and Jonah lived during the beginning of Sleepless. Only the interior of that house was shown in the movie in the scene in which Sam’s sister, Suzy (aka Rita Wilson), tells Sam how to prepare the food she has made for him.

And even though the residence’s exterior was never shown in Sleepless, since we were less than a block away, I just had to stalk that property, too! 🙂

Big THANK YOU to David and to the West Seattle Blog readers for their help in finding these locations! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Jessica’s house from Sleepless in Seattle is located at 1816 4th Avenue North in the Queen Anne neighborhood of Seattle. The home used for the interiors of Sam and Jonah’s Chicago residence can be found just down the street at 1701 4th Avenue North.

April 2, 2010April 2, 2010

The “Sleepless in Seattle” Houseboat

Another Seattle area location that my good friend and fellow stalker Kerry stalked for me a few weeks back was the houseboat where Sam Baldwin (aka Tom Hanks) and his son Jonah (aka Ross Malinger) lived in one of my favorite romantic comedies of all time, 1993’s Sleepless in Seattle. I just re-watched Sleepless last night, actually, in order to write today’s post and was absolutely amazed at how incredibly fabulous the movie still is, almost two decades after it was first released! It’s a classic and I honestly cannot tell you how much I LOVE it. Like LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it! In fact, I can still remember exactly where I was when I first saw it seventeen years ago. It was the summer of 1993, I was sixteen years old, and my parents and I were vacationing in Santa Barbara. While shopping on State Street, we stumbled upon Paseo Nuevo Cinemas, saw Sleepless on the marquee, and decided to buy tickets. I actually still have my ticket from that day, in fact, in a shoebox somewhere in my closet. In the years since, I’ve walked by that same movie theatre countless times while visiting the Santa Barbara area and each time I do the memories from that day never fail to bring a smile to my face. So, when Kerry mentioned that she was going to stalk the Sleepless houseboat, I just about died. Oh, what I wouldn’t give to see that place in person! So, I decided that, even though I have yet to stalk the house myself yet, I just had to blog about it. Thank you, Kerry!

In Sleepless in Seattle, Sam and Jonah Baldwin leave their home in Chicago and move into the Seattle area houseboat pictured above in order to make a fresh start after losing their wife and mother, respectively, a few months prior.

In real life, the Sleepless in Seattle houseboat is located in a gated community of sorts in the Lake Union area of Seattle, Washington (actual gates are pictured above) and is, sadly, not at all visible from the street. Typically, the only way to catch a glimpse of the place is if you travel by it by boat. Thankfully, though, as I’ve mentioned before on my blog, Kerry isn’t one to be easily deterred. As luck would have it, there was an open house in the neighborhood on the day Kerry stalked the place and so she was allowed to wander right in past the main gate! YAY!

As you can in the above screen captures and photographs, the houseboat looks almost EXACTLY the same today as it did when Sleepless was filmed over 17 years ago! In fact, the only differences I noticed were that the front door is currently painted a bright red color and that the fencing around the back patio has been changed from metal to wood.

The four bedroom, two bath houseboat, which was first built in 1978, was apparently for sale in 2008 for a whopping $2.5 million, but I was unable to discern if it was ever actually purchased by someone or if it is still currently up for grabs. If you look at the home’s interior photographs on its real estate website, though, you can see that the inside was not used in the filming of Sleepless. Although the interior of the real life home and its onscreen counterpart bear a striking resemblance to each other, you can tell by the location of both the kitchen and the stairway leading up to the second level that they are not the same place. In real life, the inside of the houseboat, which measures 2,075 square feet, is also much larger than it was made to look onscreen. I am guessing that the entire interior that appeared in the movie was just a set that producers had built on a soundstage somewhere.

If you’ll notice in the above picture, though, the little bench that Sam sits on at night in the movie is there in real life, too. So LOVE it!

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I am happy to report, too, that the mailboxes seen in the flick are in fact the community’s real life mailboxes and that they look very much the same today as they did back in 1993 when Sleepless was filmed. YAY!

Big THANK YOU to Kerry for stalking this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Sleepless in Seattle houseboat is located at 2460 Westlake Avenue North in the Lake Union area of Seattle, Washington, right next to Boatworld Marinas. Please remember that the home is located in a private community and do not trespass.