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The Most Famous Sitcom Residences In New York City


Did you know Lucy and Desi lived on the Upper East Side?

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I had no idea, but apparently, their apartment was located at 623 East 68th Street. There’s just one problem – that puts them right in the middle of the East River.

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While Lucy and Desi’s apartment might not have a real world counterpart, dozens of sitcoms set in New York have linked their studio sets to actual city addresses. I started doing some research the other night after watching a particularly locations heavy episode of Friends, and was amazed at how many examples I could come up with.

And so, without further ado, the Scouting NY tour of New York City’s most famous sitcom residences!

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We’ll start our tour on the Upper West Side at the apartment of our favorite NBC head writer, Liz Lemon of 30 Rock

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…who lives at 160 Riverside Drive at West 88th Street. Strangely, she moves in later seasons to the non-existent 168 Riverside Drive – perhaps the real building was no longer interested in exterior filming?

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As it turns out, Liz has a couple of sitcom neighbors…

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Will and Grace, who live literally across the street at 155 Riverside Drive.

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Moving southwest, our next stop takes us to an apartment where a lot of nothing happened over nine seasons…

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Jerry Seinfeld’s pad, located at 129 West 81st Street, btw. Amsterdam & Columbus:

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Er, OK, not exactly. Exteriors of the Seinfeld apartment were actually filmed at 757 S. New Hampshire Avenue in Los Angeles. So why use the 129 West 81st Street address? This was the actual building where Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David lived in Manhattan during their early stand-up days.

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For all those unannounced pop-ins, George Costanza’s apartment at 321 West 90th Street is pretty far away…

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Ditto Elaine Benes’ residence at 448 Central Park West and 105th Street:

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Heading east now across Central Park, we arrive at the apartment of New York’s oddest couple…

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Oscar Madison and Felix Unger, who nearly killed each other on many occasions at 1049 Park Avenue (at 87th Street), as seen on The Odd Couple.

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Just two blocks away is a deluxe apartment in the sky…

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The home of The Jeffersons, located around the corner at 185 East 85th Street (Btw. Lex/3rd):

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Heading eight blocks south, we come to another upscale highrise…

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…900 Park Avenue (at 79th Street), home to Mr. Drummond and the gang on Diff’rent Strokes:

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Just three blocks south, we arrive at our first townhouse…

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…7 E 76th Street (just off Fifth Avenue), where Fran Fine spent six years serving as The Nanny to the Sheffield family:

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Making a major leap from the Upper East Side down to the West Village (because sitcom characters apparently do not live anywhere inbetween) takes us to one of the most famous sitcom apartments of all time…

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Monica, Rachel, Chandler and Joey’s building on Friends, located on the fifth floor of 90 Bedford Street.

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Amazingly, the show located the additional characters all within a few short blocks. Ross eventually moves into Ugly Naked Guy’s building directly across the street at 19-21 Grove Street…

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…while Phoebe is shown at a walk-up a few blocks away at 5 Morton Street.

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And wouldn’t they be surprised to learn they all live just around the corner from New York’s preeminent OBGYN…

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Though the Huxtables were said to reside at the fictional 10 Stigwood Avenue, which may or may not have been in Brooklyn Heights, The Cosby Show exterior was filmed at 10 St. Luke’s Place just off of 7th Ave (the townhouse covered in ivy):

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Also located in the West Village is arguably the most famous TV townhouse in New York…

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Carrie Bradshaw’s apartment from Sex and the City, located at 64 Perry Street and currently undergoing a complete overhaul:

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And while it’s not an apartment, I’d be remiss in not pointing out that the exteriors for the taxi stand in Taxi were shot at an old garage at 534 Hudson Street…

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…since demolished in 1998 to make way for this condo building:

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Heading east takes us to the home of Paul and Jamie Buchman…

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…the Mad About You building at 51 Fifth Avenue.

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Of course, sitcom living is not restricted to Manhattan. A pretty big leap over to Glendale, Queens brings us to the home of Archie and Edith…

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…the All in the Family house, located at 89-70 Cooper Avenue (literally across the street from a cemetery).

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Another big jump takes us to 328 Chauncey Street in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, home of The Honeymooners.

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Though no exteriors of the building were ever actually shown (and it was referred to as being in Bensonhurst), this was Jackie Gleason’s actual childhood home, from which he drew much inspiration for the show.

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Now we move to the home of a girl who’s only seen the sights a girl can see from Brooklyn Heights…

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Did you ever really get the sense The Patty Duke Show was set in Brooklyn Heights? Honestly, if not for the theme lyrics, you’d think they were next door neighbors with Donna Reed, but the show did go out of its way to cite their address as 8 Remsen Street in Brooklyn (though no townhouse exists there today):

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Finally, our last stop takes us completely out of New York City and over the Hudson River, because as it turns out, the King of Queens

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…actually lives at 517 Longview Avenue in Cliffside Park, New Jersey.

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Here’s a handy map to put it all in perspective…

Though I was only going for the big ones that have stood the test of time (or should I have included Caroline in the City’s 168 Duane Street apartment building?), I’m sure I missed some glaringly obvious examples. Be sure to let me know in the comments and I’ll add it in!

-SCOUT


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53 Comments

    1. George’s parents are in Astoria, Queens. I think its 36th street between Ditmars and 23rd ave

      1. The house for the Nanny in this article is wrong. The address for the house is 7 E. 75th Street on the Upper East Side in New York City. They were off by one block.

    2. I could swear that episodes of Mad About You also showed the 155 Riverside Drive awning….

  1. Hey Scout:
    The Buchmans of “Mad About You” lived at 41 Fifth Avenue. Paragon Sports was digitally relabled as “Buchmans” and the Old Town Bar as their hangout “Riff’s”.

  2. Don’t mean to be persnickety, but no love for ‘How I Met Your Mother’ or ‘Who’s the Boss?’?

    Great work though!

    1. Yes, I was going to suggest How I Met Your Mother as well. I imagine you can fill a whole post with the locations from that show..

    2. How I met your mother was almost exclusively filmed on a studio lot. If you watch closely you’ll see the same exteriors over and over again. Especially the back alley with the garage door.

      1. The same lot that Bones is filled on. You can actually see a TON identical locations between the two shows.

  3. Very fun!

    I feel like I see 155 Riverside Drive in a LOT of TV shows and movies – maybe a potential future blog post? Who all lives there? I think Joe Fox in You’ve Got Mail might live at 152 Riverside Drive – I think I remember him living on Riverside and then his screenname was NY152 for his address.

    1. Close. The address was fictional but the building is very real. All the locations were on the UWS except for the Fox books store which was shot before the Loehmans moved into Barneys on 7th Ave in Chelsea.

      http://onthesetofnewyork.com/youvegotmail.html

      I live next to Will and Grace and Liz Lemon. Movie companies love our block as both 88 and 89th streets are wider than others and the Riverside angle allows them to get wide shots. Law and Order also loved our street and I’ve passed many walking cadavers on my way to the subway.

    1. The Petries lived at 148 Bonnie Meadow Road, New Rochelle, but Carl Reiner actually lived at 48 Bonnie Meadow Road. 48 Bonnie Meadow Road, New Rochelle is now for sale for $650,000. It even has a rock in the basement and some brick walls just as the TV show. Looks like a great house with an amazing history.

      1. I just looked at some pictures, and 48 Bonnie Meadow Road doesn’t have a rock in the basement.

  4. The Lanes of The Patty Duke Show lived directly across the street from the entrance to Hell located at 10 Montague Terrace (The Sentinel 1977).

    1. That’s perfect! And I really can’t believe the show was set in NYC. It really did seem completely suburban.

  5. I’ve always wondered about the actual floorplans of TV homes.
    Did Ricky and Lucy really live in an apartment with a windowless livingroom?
    Where exactly was Jerry Seinfeld’s bedroom? There’s no way it could fit in that space where he keeps the bike, between the main room and the bathroom and share a wall with Kramer’s place!

      1. “What’s even odder is how Kramer could afford his apartment, considering he hasn’t worked in years.”

        For what it’s worth, it was established in a minor cross-over that Kramer is sub-letting from Paul Buchman (“Mad About You”) — maybe he took pity on him.

        I’m wondering now where Ann Marie (Marlo Thomas, “That Girl”) lived.

    1. There are a couple of artists that have created ‘fantasy’ floor plans for a bunch of TV shows including Seinfield. Just search ‘tv show floor plans’ and you’ll get some hits.

      Scout- a fun post!

    2. Lucy & Ricky lived in two different apartments in the same building. They started in 4A, which had no window. Then, when Little Ricky was born, they moved to Apt 3D, which did have a window (which ledge Lucy and Superman famously shared one fine day). While 4A was probably on one side of the building and 3D on the other (hence why the lower floor could have a window), it doesn’t explain how both the hallway and the backdoor off the kitchen did not change orientation. 🙂

      1. Of course the “Ricardo” apartment did have a window in Apartment 4A of “623 East 68th Street,” only the viewer never much saw it, as was fictitiously across the living room (but actually the “fourth wall” of the General Service Studios at 6633 Romaine Street in Hollywood, directly in front of where the studio audience was seated).

        There is at least one episode from the first season of “I Love Lucy” wherein “Lucy Ricardo” and “Ethel Mertz” may be seen peering out the living room window of 4A through a pair of binoculars at some new neighbors moving into the “Mertz’s” apartment building. The episode is #21 and titled “New Neighbors.” the male half of the “new neighbors”couple (“The O’Briens”) portrayed by Hayden Rorke, best known as “Dr. Alfred Bellows” in the Screen Gems TV sitcom “I Dream of Jeannie.”

  6. I lived on the Upper West Side throughout the run of Seinfeld.
    And, though there we’re many establishing shots using local
    buildings, my favorite was the one in which I currently work in Midtown Manhattan — 101 Park Avenue at East 40th Street. It’s sleek black exterior and spacious entrance area has been used in numerous films and television shows. But, it is always fun to see it featured whenever we need to know exactly where George Costanza’s Kruger Industrial Smoothing is located.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/101_Park_Avenue

    1. Apologies for my previous post…

      I got so caught up in the subject that I completely forgot that we were talking about sitcom RESIDENCES and not just any sitcom locations.

      My bad.

  7. I believe that in the first season of Patty Duke Show there was a flash view of her house. While I remember it had a suburban look, it reminded me of Kew Gardens by Forest Park or the Bronxville area.

  8. While Carrie’s exterior was in the West Village on the show she lived on the Upper East Side.

  9. This is fantastic. I would add one of my favorite NYC shows–with bonus points for exterior scenes shot around the city at the start of each episode–Kate and Allie!

    1. I am unsure of the fictional address of “Kate & Allie,” but do know the series was taped at The Ed Sullivan Theater (a/k/a CBS Studio 50) at 1697 Broadway, between West 53rd and W. 54th Streets in Manhattan, as well some scenes at Second Stage (CBS Studio 72), 81st Street and Broadway.

  10. The “All in the Family” house on Cooper Avenue in Glendale has an enclosed porch. The set in Hollywood used an open porch. The owner had lived in the house since 1924. She died in 2009. Current photo shows new porch windows and standing flag pole has been removed

  11. Not an apartment, but I was never quite clear on where the NewsRadio studio was located. It was definitely in midtown, though the “Mexican place downstairs” they’d occasionally go to was located on lower Broadway.

  12. How about the more obscure UWS home of Molly Dodd from The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd? Supposedly they won’t release it because they used too much music that they didn’t secure the correct rights for.

    1. I am pretty sure that Molly Dodd’s apartment was on West 77th Street between West End Avenue and Riverside Drive. (I also remember that in the pilot episode there was a scene at a store located on the northeast corner of Columbus Avenue and West 81st Street.)

  13. I never watched Friends having Sex in the City. Never saw what all the fuss was about and not much for cupcakes either but some people seem to get all caught up in this stuff. For what it is worth my apartment in Queens could have been a model for the Honeymooner’s. Second floor front walk up, no A/C and when the widows were open, which was often, we could hear the melting pot in all it’s glory.

  14. I never understood why the Seinfeld producers used what was obviously an LA exterior for Jerry’s apartment. How many shots do you really need for the entire nine year run? 4? Maybe 5? They used tons of NYC exteriors for other locations. But for arguably the most important, they used a building on a street so steep, it could never be mistaken for New York. Odd.

  15. How about ted’s (from how I met your mother) apartment above their favorite bar? It was mentioned in one of the first episodes that he lives on the corner of Amsterdam and 75th street

    1. That’s on Henry street between Catherine and Market I think. I have passed it several times.

  16. That’s not the building from the Cosby Show. The building to the left of the Cosby house is white.

  17. Although the sitcom “Maude” was depicted as being set in New York, the exterior shots of Maude’s home was actually a home in Hollywood, California. There appears to be no information of where that Hollywood home is actually located. Anybody know?

    1. I forget, it’s been so long since I’ve seen that show, Maude’s house was originally supposed to be somewhere in Staten Island wasn’t it?

      1. Maude was supposed to live in Tuckahoe, NY. I think I read some where that the house used in the opening sequence was in Queens.

  18. The exterior picture used in this article to depict the Heffernan’s house on The King of Queens is incorrect. The house to the right of the one pictured is the actual house used it the exterior shots on the show.

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