Brick storefronts step down a hillside street to a river quay with a preserved paddlewheeler.
What Downtown New Westminster looks like
Columbia Street runs along the high ground of downtown New Westminster above the Fraser River, then drops through Sixth Street and Fourth Street toward Front Street at the base of the slope. Red and buff brick storefronts line both sides of the street for several blocks, most two to three storeys, with the eight storey at 709 Columbia Street rising above its neighbours along the block.
Upper floor windows keep their original masonry surrounds, and several buildings carry cream terra cotta trim above the storefronts. The , at 652 Columbia Street, is a boxy two storey building with a flat roof. A projecting sheet metal marquee and a neon Paramount sign from 1948 hang over the sidewalk.
Front Street runs along the river at the bottom of the hill, with mixed brick and painted wood storefronts including one at with green painted wooden trim over its ground floor windows. Rail tracks run along the waterfront below Front Street, and the 1937 paddlewheeler is moored nearby as a preserved vessel.
stands on Sixth Street uphill from Columbia Street, a civic building with its own forecourt. , the SkyTrain Expo Line stop, sits close to the 1899 Canadian Pacific Railway station near the waterfront. Elevated guideway tracks are visible above the street there.
Shot in Downtown New Westminster
Godzilla used the corner of Front Street and Sixth Street as Janjira, Japan, for its 2014 opening scenes. The corner of Columbia Street and Sixth Street played San Francisco elsewhere in the same film. The 2009 Twilight sequel New Moon used the Paramount Theatre on Columbia Street as the movie theatre for a date scene, and the 1990 IT miniseries filmed the Paramount as itself. New Westminster City Hall played Star City's city hall across several seasons of the CW series Arrow, and the Royal Towers building at Royal Avenue and Sixth Street played the Twin Pines Inn in the CW series Batwoman.
Alcatraz
The Front Street storefront
Played the exterior of Ray's apartment building, called Front Street Apartments in the show
MovieMaps identifies 607 Front Street as the exterior used for Ray's apartment building in Guy Hastings, an episode of the 2012 Fox series Alcatraz. The scene follows detectives Rebecca and Hauser searching the building for a missing man.
Columbia Street's two and three storey brick blocks were rebuilt after an 1898 fire and share the same turn of the century commercial scale as Port Townsend's Water Street. Water Street is another Pacific coast waterfront main street with a slope down to the water, and no production credit ties the two areas together, so this is an architectural comparison rather than a documented substitution. Port Townsend's storefronts sit closer to sea level with almost no grade, so a shot that lingers on Columbia Street's steep drop toward Front Street would need a flatter block to hold the illusion. Try searching early 1900s brick main street now.
Fillmore Street in San Francisco, California
Godzilla (2014) shot the intersection of Columbia Street and Sixth Street as a San Francisco street, using the same steep grade and older masonry storefronts that line hillside commercial corridors like Fillmore Street. The production did not identify a specific San Francisco neighbourhood, so the comparison here is architectural rather than a scene by scene match. San Francisco's own hills run steeper and its storefronts sit narrower and more brightly painted than New Westminster's flat brick fronts, so a wide shot needs a grade close to the one at Sixth Street to read convincingly. Try searching steep hillside storefronts now.
Baker Street in Nelson, British Columbia
Nelson's Baker Street is another sloped brick and stone commercial strip built in the same period as Columbia Street, with similar two and three storey storefronts and cornice lines. Nelson sits far from Vancouver's crew base, and New Westminster has the same period main street look much closer to the city's crew base. Baker Street's mountain backdrop and narrower street width are missing here, so a wide shot that includes the skyline behind the block would need to avoid Columbia Street's flatter, more urban surroundings. Try searching sloped brick main street now.
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