The Magic of Finding Fictional Buildings

On the soothing balm of tracking down film and TV locations.

The “Friends” apartment building. Photo: Thea Glassman

It started with the Friends apartment — a six-story, light tan building with the classic zigzag of New York City fire escapes, and a cherry-red restaurant down below. I was 10 at the time and stared, completely mesmerized, every time the camera cut briefly to the exterior, just before sweeping inside Monica’s cheerful apartment, with those warm purple walls and overstuffed pillows. My parents owned a small black-and-white TV set at the time, often hidden under stacks of newspapers, and sometimes it would pick up The WB channel if you jiggled the antennae at the exact right angle. Through a cloud of static, you could catch Ross, Rachel, and the rest of the gang living their fun adult lives, and it became important — no, absolutely critical — that I find out where they lived. 

Every day when I’d get done with school, I settled down at the extra desktop computer in my parents’ office, and tried to track down the location of that apartment. Ask Jeeves consistently failed me, as did Google, but I pressed on — in between creating a Geocities webpage filled with photos from the show, alongside my favorite lines. (“They said it’s funny,” Chandler wildly air quotes in one of them. “Just not Archie Comics funny.”) 

I was an anxious child at the time, which is a polite way of saying that I was constantly worried about everyone I loved dying, and checked closets over and over (and over) again for murderers. Plunking myself in that office chair and searching for Monica’s home gave me a resolute, single-minded purpose, creating blissful order in the buzzing chaos of my brain.  

When I finally did find the apartment, it was entirely by accident, one day after school. There it was, patiently waiting, smack dab on the corner of Bedford and Grove Streets. As I stepped back and took in the building I had been chasing for so long, cherry-red restaurant exactly like it was on the screen, I felt tingly and warm — the same warmth that wrapped around me when I delicately held the antenna in my hand, peering through the fuzz at my favorite fictional world. 

As I got a little older, I turned my attention to Carrie Bradshaw’s brownstone, tucked away on a quiet street in the West Village. By that point, my mind had turned into a constant loop of insecurities — usually about my body and everything I had said wrong at school that day — and whenever it got too painful, I’d sit on a stoop across the street from Carrie’s house. I would think about her sashaying up those steps in her soft tulle dress, or that time Big drove up and parked in front with balloons for her birthday, and for a few moments, everything felt safe. 

Carrie Bradshaw’s apartment on “Sex and the City.” Photo: Thea Glassman

I continued searching for fictional locations any time life got cloudy and uncertain, once taking a bus all the way to Freehold, New Jersey to track down the old, peeling Victorian house from Sabrina the Teenage Witch. It was pouring that day, and my canvas sneakers were soaked as I walked down E. Main St., hearing only the sounds of the occasional car zipping by and the squish-squish of water sloshing in my shoes. When I found the house, it didn’t look quite as grand and Gothic as I expected, but that was okay. I snapped a picture and treated myself to a burrito at a local Mexican restaurant. You always have to eat a good meal after you location scout.

I’ve been to The Office building in the industrial neighborhood of Van Nuys, California, and then walked through an empty overpass to track down Jim and Pam’s house (followed by a ham-and-cheese sandwich from Jimmy Johns). I found the apartment building from New Girl in the Arts District of LA (followed by a large spicy sausage and a lemonade from a very hipster beer hall). And I headed to Wrightsville Beach in an unsuccessful attempt to find Pacey’s house from Dawson’s Creek (journey made redeemable thanks to a Shirley Temple and key lime pie at a neighboring oceanside cafe).

Years ago, I spent the year studying in a small British city called Norwich. Lonely, homesick, and perpetually on edge around my cool, younger flatmates, I decided to take the four-hour Megabus trip to London to visit Hugh Grant’s home from Notting Hill.  As I stared out the bus window at the dark, dreary sky, I took a break from folding and unfolding my thoughts, and focused only on that door, the bright blue door of Hugh Grant’s house. 

It wasn’t easy to find. I ended up getting lost in a sea of pastel-colored storefronts, stopped in a small bookshop to buy a book on London movie locations, and asked several people on the street where Westbourne Road was (all of whom vaguely pointed and said “just round the corner,” even though it was never, ever just around the corner).

All that mattered was that I found that blue door. By the time I did, my stomach was rumbling and I felt lightheaded from the soggy, humid trek. But I had found it, and it looked exactly like it did in the movie. For a brief moment, I felt the warmth of Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts and the magical, snowglobe London I had fallen in love with on the screen. Satisfied, I took my picture and then headed straight to McDonald’s, where I ordered ten chicken nuggets and a small Coke. I plopped down on a plastic swivel chair, unbuttoned my pants under my jacket with great relish, and, for the first time in a long while, didn’t think about anything at all.